


Synth

by midnighteverlark



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Cyborgs, F/M, Laboratories, Mad Scientists, Science Fiction, apprentice!Peeta, cyborg!Katniss, scientist!Peeta, supersoldier!Katniss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-07 14:43:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 41,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4267224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnighteverlark/pseuds/midnighteverlark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Half-organic, half-synthetic, KTNS-12 is a Synth cooked up in Beetee's laboratory as a super soldier prototype.  As pure and innocent as she is deadly, Katniss, as they call her, is thrown into a world she knows nothing about, created and tested for a war she isn't part of. She quickly attaches herself to Peeta, Beetee's young apprentice, and he can't help but to feel drawn to her as well. But Katniss is an experiment, and Peeta is a scientist in training. Synths aren't supposed to feel emotions, least of all love.<br/>Perhaps the organic and synthetic pieces of Katniss's patchwork mind can work in harmony to find a solution.<br/>Or perhaps not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Imprinted

Cold. That is what I am aware of first. Cold, and then a sudden, stark brightness burning red through my eyelids.

_Eyelids?_

Noise. Sound, but not just that – words. Speech. It trickles into my head as the deep, electric cold gnaws on my bones, and gradually the sounds resolve themselves into patterns I recognize.

"… very optimistic… this model… withstand up to…"

The voice is smooth and measured, the inflections precise, and the timbre deep. _Male,_ my brain supplies. Momentarily I wonder at the meaning of the word, but then I remember – or, rather, I _know_ , since remembering requires a previously formed memory – male. Female. Sexes.

And suddenly, it occurs to me: if the voice is male, that male must possess a body with which to produce speech. Which means I must have a body, too, in order to hear it. Of course, I knew before that I was equipped with various sensory receptors, or I wouldn't hear the voice, wouldn't see the glare of bright, white light beyond my closed eyelids, wouldn't feel this terrible chill. But it hadn't occurred to me that those receptors were part of a whole body, nor that I could possess it. Reside in it. _Be_ it.

As soon as I become aware of the body – _my_ body – I begin to feel it. My back and shoulders pressed against a slippery-smooth surface, cold as the air around me. My hands – the fingertips twitch as I mentally catalogue them – and my legs, stretched out and limp.

The voice changes abruptly, tearing my attention away from my skin and muscle and bones.

"… like the others?"

The words are the tail end of a question, I can tell by the tone, although how that instinctual knowledge came to be in my head in the first place is a mystery to me.

"I've made some progress on the calibration since then," the voice replies, and I realize the question must have come from a different voice entirely. A different person, also male, but lacking the slow cadence of the first. "All of the kinks should be worked out by now. Knock on wood."

I'm able to understand most of the words now, individually, but their collective meaning eludes me. Something hot and gritty wells up in me and my hands twitch again. _Frustration,_ my brain supplies, once again providing information of unknown origin.

"She moved," says a third voice, this one younger than the others.

_But how? How do I know he's young? How do I know these words?_

I search myself, delving into my own mind, seeking any shred of memory. But all that comes is what I've just experienced. That farthest back I can go is to that first moment of coldness and brightness and babbling, meaningless noise.

"Ah. Yes. That does happen occasionally," the first voice says, and this time I'm able to string the words together into a complete thought. I understand the message, not just the words by themselves. Triumphant, I refocus on the voice, hoping it will happen again. And it does. "Its motor control has been limited, up until now, but once in a while it'll twitch. Like a fetus in the womb, really."

This is harder. Fetus. Womb. Unfamiliar words, unfamiliar concepts, but after a moment my brain makes the necessary connections. He's talking about an unborn human child. No, not talking about. Comparing to.

And then, I realize with a sick jolt that snaps deep through my gut – _me._ He's comparing _me_ to an unborn child. He's talking about me. And it makes sense. It would explain the lack of prior memories… But then, it doesn't explain the information seemingly stashed away in my brain, ready for retrieval at a single thought, nor the apparent maturity of my body. I don't feel small, as I imagine a newborn child would. I don't feel weak. But if not that, then what?

The question that has been lingering in my chest since I became aware now pushes to the forefront of my mind: _What am I?_

"I expect it'll be moving more frequently, now that it's been initiated," the most talkative voice continues, and all at once the desire for sight takes hold of me. I want to see who these people are, and, moreover, where they are. They can obviously see me, and that puts me at a disadvantage. They could be a threat, and I have no way to defend myself.

Suddenly, I feel vulnerable. Alone. Bare. The sensation trembles through me in waves.

There's a hard, rapid squeeze in my chest – _my heart,_ that mysterious cache of information tells me – as a fluttery tightness coils around me. A steady beep, a noise I hadn't even registered until now, increases in tempo, matching the rhythm of my heart, and the voices fall into an unsteady silence. I can't see, and I want to open my eyes but I don't know how, and that fluttering pressure is winding tighter and tighter and I'm _scared_ – I wasn't even aware of the concept of fear until now, but I _am,_ I'm scared, and –

My eyelids flutter and the brightness pierces my eyes, so white and so much that they instinctively squeeze closed again, the greenish ghost of the light drifting away behind my eyelids. I try again, the muscles of my face contracting for the first time as I squint. There's a series of muffled taps – _footsteps_ – and then the light dims, fading into a comfortable half-darkness, and I can finally see the space around me.

The three males stand several feet in front of me. Each is unique, but my attention is pulled away by the room itself before I can examine them. Small. Gray-walled. Shiny-clean, to a degree that makes me shiver. I am suspended at a forty-five degree angle on a metal slab, head-up, in the center of the room, and my three observers are clustered near a polished steel door. My eyes dart from one to another. The oldest wears a pair of boxy glasses that flash in the light and a long, white coat, pens bristling from the breast pocket. He peers at me down a large nose, lifting a finger to push at his glasses, his eyes sharp and inquisitive. The man next to him is obviously younger, and he stands straighter, his hands clasped behind him. His facial hair is sculpted into some strange design, and his eyes, pale blue and fixed on me with keen interest, are set deep in a pale face. I don't like the way either of them are looking at me, and my heart is still pounding out _danger-danger-danger,_ so I shift my gaze to the last person in the room.

This is the youngest, the one that noticed when my fingers twitched. His own fingers still rest on a switch by the door. He must have turned down the lights when I recoiled from them. Then his lips move, soundlessly, drawing my eyes to his face, and I find myself looking into a pair of wide, blue eyes. Not blue like the bearded man. Not a pale, cold blue, but deep and rich, with tiny flecks of other shades sprinkled throughout. His hair is gold – no, _blond_ , that's the word – and I find myself somewhat fixated on it. The thick waves, unruly despite a light application of styling gel, are the only yellow hue in the room. Everything else is some variant on gray or blue or white.

The man with the glasses speaks first, and I identify him as the one who compared me to a fetus. "Ah," he says, "It's booting up. I wondered if that would be happening soon."

The bearded man says nothing, his eyes continuing to drag up and down my body, but his lips curl up slightly.

I look down.

My hair is long and dark and glossy, falling about my shoulders and past my elbows. And I am female, I can see, although I am sure I would have known that long before if it had occurred to me to wonder. Unlike the three men, I am not covered in fabric – _clothing_ – so in a glance I can take in the two modestly sized breasts, tips stiff and rosy in the cold air, and the soft cleft at the junction of my thighs.

My skin is similar in color to the man with the glasses: a dull olive, like… like… I have nothing to compare it to, apparently. Here and there, a silvery shimmer interrupts the pale brown. _Scars,_ I think at first, but no – the marks aren't raised or knotted, as scar tissue would be, and the color is all wrong. Scars generally fall somewhere on the spectrum between pink and white, if my strange stockpile of information is correct, and these markings are very definitely silver. They swirl over my left hip, spider-web across my right thigh, brush past my ribs and lace down my right shoulder. I slide my left hand to my hip, slowly, and stroke the marking there with my thumb. It feels no different from the rest of my skin. Supple. Dry. Peppered with goose bumps.

_Goose bumps_. What a strange phrase. And stranger still that I knew it immediately, without having to think.

The bearded man moves, drawing my attention up again, and I find him pointing to that space where my legs converge. "Is it equipped with a reproductive system?"

The oldest man casts him a sharp look, flicking off his glasses to clean them on a corner of the coat. "Well, it has all the other major organ systems. It seemed silly not to include that one. And after all, our goal was to create a specimen as accurate as possible, so as to blend in. But may I remind you, Mr. Crane, that this model was designed for military and espionage application, not for sale."

"Of course," the bearded man – Crane – agrees, tucking his hand into a lapel. "I'm simply trying to keep our options open. If this project goes south, at least we know that models like this little lady will fetch a pretty penny in… other markets."

My head is swimming, their words colliding and meshing in my skull. Sale? Accurate specimen? Military and espionage? Other markets? What is this? What are these men going to do to me?

The pressure in my chest redoubles, sending the beeping into a frantic tempo again, and the man with glasses frowns and approaches me, muttering something about a faulty cardiovascular system.

"What's wrong with it?" Crane sniffs, taking a half-step back. "I thought you said all of its internal organs were stable."

"They should be," the man replies, reaching for my left wrist. I flinch as his hand closes around my arm and he lifts it, revealing a slender needle buried in the crook of my elbow. "Could be an adverse effect from the sedatives."

The youngest man steps forward, tentatively. He's more of a boy, really. His eyes meet mine, something I can't name shining in their depths. "Beetee, she looks…" he ventures, then hesitates. He still hasn't broken eye contact. "Scared," he decides at last.

The man with glasses – Beetee, I suppose his name is – gives a dismissive flick of the hand. "Impossible. Its brain may be half organic, but it wasn't designed for emotional experience."

The boy still hasn't looked away, and I'm not about to, either. He's the only person in the room who seems to care about me in the slightest, even if it's in a distant, non-personal kind of way, and I desperately need something to hold on to. Beetee is fiddling with the needle, sliding it out of my elbow and back in again, feeling my pulse, pushing at different places on my neck, and I'm sick with fear I'm not supposed to be able to feel.

"ID," Beetee says, for once looking me straight in the eye.

"KTNS-12." The answer is out of my mouth before I even register the question, and I regret it immediately. Talking makes me aware of a number of discomforts, primarily the dry, itching ache in my throat.

My answer must have been satisfactory, because he gives a short nod before removing the needle entirely and dabbing at the resulting globule of blood with a square of gauze.

"It bleeds?" Crane says, and I swear I catch Beetee rolling his eyes as he turns away to fetch a small, tan, vaguely oval scrap of… something. _A band-aid._

"Of course."

"I thought you said its skin was synthetic."

"No," Beetee corrects, securing the little adhesive patch over the pinprick in my elbow, "Synthetically reinforced, but still mainly organic. The internal organs are similarly augmented. Only the bones are entirely synthetic. Otherwise it's just bits and pieces here and there."

Crane nods, taking one last look at me, and then slaps his palms together brusquely and turns for the door with a clipped, "Keep me updated."

The door swings open with a stream of warm air, allowing me the briefest glimpse of a beige hallway before clicking shut again. A prickling shiver crawls up my legs and through my torso. That split second of warmth on my skin only served to redouble the lingering chill, and my calves tense with the desire to bolt from the room, to leave this cold, gray place behind and… and… what? Where would I go? Now I know that a hallway exists beyond this room, and something else must exist beyond that, but what then?

The feeling of helplessness sweeps over me again and a choked noise rises from the back of my throat before I can swallow it. Two pairs of eyes flick back to my face, one calculating, one concerned. The younger's eyes slide down for one second before he turns away, the skin of his face and neck subtly shifting hues. "Are, um," he stammers, "Aren't you going to get her some clothes now that she's awake?"

Beetee gives an odd, burbling kind of noise. A sound of amusement, I realize. Laughter. "It isn't a human girl, Peeta. In fact, it's more machine than person. Just think of it as…" He presses a button on the side of the metal table and I begin to tip forward. "A very lifelike and intelligent combat android."

It takes me a moment to puzzle out that phrase, _combat android_ , but once I do I wither inside of myself. Is that what I am? Not a human girl, not a human at all, but machine masquerading as a person. Synthetic bones covered in reinforced flesh and piloted by a brain that's only fifty percent organic. And made for battle, no less. No wonder they've been keeping their distance.

The boy, Peeta, stares determinedly at my toes. He takes a breath before countering, "You said she was mostly human."

"Mostly organic. There's a difference."

"I still think –"

But Beetee is already striding away, plucking a slim rectangle of glass from a counter and tapping it until it begins to glow, charts and statistics lighting up across the surface. He flips through the information, nods a few times, and then says, "I'll get the prep team. You stay here and run through the initialization procedures."

"What, by myself?" Peeta says, but the door has already opened and closed, mocking me with another tantalizing gust of warm air. He stays still for a moment, staring at the closed door, and then lets out a breath and turns to me.

"Can you stand?" he says, and I stare at him for a minute before realizing that he's actually talking to me. And that he expects an answer.

I try to say, "I don't know," but it comes out as a cracked whisper. His brows sink and he steps away, and panic lurches through me. I don't want him to leave. I don't want to be alone.

_Please don't go,_ I want to say, but my throat is too dry, the delicate tissues swollen. Something in my gut heaves, forcing air through my lips in a short, voiceless bark, and once I start I can't stop. My whole frame jerks rhythmically, my jaw drooping open as my lungs attempt to escape through my mouth. _Coughing,_ my mind identifies the action, but I don't particularly care what it's called. I just want it to stop. It hurts, everything hurts, and the cold air burns inside me with every harsh inhale.

There's a touch on my shoulder, rough and pliable at the same time and _warm,_ and I lean into it on instinct. It slides around to my back, pressing me forward, away from the metal slab. My center of gravity fluctuates with the motion and my legs buckle abruptly. The hand on my back is joined by another on my side, stabilizing me, but it doesn't help much. Everything is spinning and wobbling. My head aches and the floor tilts alarmingly. Another soft, pathetic sound passes my lips as my legs give out entirely.

Gentle, repetitive murmurs reach me through the haze – "Hey, hey… I got you, it's okay… You're okay…" – and the hand on my back begins rubbing soothing circles between my shoulder blades.

Eventually, the dizziness abates and I become aware of my new resting spot. I'm sagging against Peeta, my feet dragging against the floor, limp and useless, my forearms braced against his chest. And, _oh,_ he's warm.

I'm already moving before I consciously decide to, fingers tangling in the barrier of fabric that separates me from his skin. The cloth shifts, parting slightly, and I burrow underneath. There's another cloth barrier there, but it's much thinner, silky under my fingertips. It's not bare skin, but it'll do. I nuzzle against him, soaking up the luscious heat. His chest rises under my hands as he inhales sharply, and his own hands move to my shoulders again, pushing gently, but I won't be dissuaded. I just found this little nook of warmth and softness. I don't intend on leaving it anytime soon.

My lungs expand in a long, lazy breath – _a sigh_ – as his hands return to my back and begin to rub again. Something registers in my brain every time I inhale, igniting the pleasure centers of my brain. It's a scent, warm and fresh, and though I have nothing to compare it to, I'm sure this aroma is a good one.

The tension in my chest is slowly dissolving, now that both of the older men are gone and I've found a reprieve from the chill. The back half of me is still cold, but there's not much I can do about that. It's better than being on that table, at least.

His fingers hit a tender spot at the small of my back and I give a little moan. If I had realized how comforting the embrace of another human being could be, I would have hopped off that table the moment I opened my eyes and gone straight to him. But, no, I remember: I am not human. And anyway, I wouldn't have been able to walk to him in that moment. I was, _am,_ too unstable. I'm not even sure I could walk now.

"Okay," he says, and I can feel the rumble of his voice where my hands lie over his ribcage. "Okay. You're okay." And then, thoughtfully, almost as if he's talking to himself, "You _were_ scared, weren't you?"

I tense against him. Beetee said I wasn't designed to feel emotions. Admitting to experiencing fear would be admitting to malfunctioning. They'll know something is wrong. They'll know I don't function the way I'm supposed to. And then they'll… what, kill me? Disassemble me, crack open my synthetic skull to see what went wrong? The thought sends my heart thudding against my ribs again, the rhythm pulsing in my temples and fingertips.

"Or maybe you were just cold," he reasons, and, relieved, I nod. This is something I can admit to with no fear. I know, somehow, that my body was intentionally equipped with thermal receptors, so surely they won't punish me for feeling cold. Surely that should be a good sign. My body is, at least in that respect, performing as expected.

Peeta leans back, wedging his hands between us, and I duck my head with a whimpered, "No."

He laughs. It's a quiet, breathy sound, not at all like Beetee's dry rattle of amusement. "I'm just trying to get my coat off so I can put it on you. Is that okay?" I don't reply, still unused to people talking directly to me and not just about me, and he coaxes my face off his shoulder with a finger. Those deep blue eyes peer down at me, crinkled with what I think is worry. "Can you understand me?"

Reluctantly, I nod.

Slipping away, even by just a few inches, is difficult. My legs still can't really support my weight, leaving me teetering and shivering in the few seconds it takes Peeta to slide his own long, white coat off his arms and offer it to me. The whole time he keeps his gaze firmly fixed on my face, and I wonder why. Neither Beetee nor Crane shied away from the sight of my body. What makes it so unappealing to Peeta? Is it simply the knowledge of what that body is made of? Is it the swirls of silver skin, so unlike his own pale completion?

I fumble with the tubes of fabric meant to go around my arms – _sleeves –_ and after a few tries he takes my arm in his palm, guiding my hand into the correct hole. He repeats this process with the other arm, then snugs the coat around my torso and deftly seals the flaps together with a row of little plastic disks – _buttons_. In the end, I'm swathed throat-to-thighs in thick, if rather rigid material. It doesn't lend nearly as much warmth as Peeta himself, but it does carry his scent, so I'll accept it. For now.

I cough again, cringing in anticipation of more pain in my throat, and he swiftly retrieves a hollow object – _cup –_ from the counter. He twists a nearby knob and there's a low, bubbling rush. When he turns back, the cup is full of a clear liquid.

"Here," he says, lifting the rim to my lips. I look at him, confused, and twist away to cough again.

He waits until I recover, and then he deliberately brings the cup to his own lips and tips some of the liquid into his mouth. His throat moves, and then he's offering it to me again. This time, I copy him, parting my lips and allowing the liquid to flow over my tongue. It's cold and tasteless, but it slides easily over the dry walls of my mouth, turning my tongue and cheeks slick and soft, so I decide I like it.

I choke trying to swallow the first mouthful, sputtering and spraying most of it over the floor and the front of his coat. The second mouthful goes down more easily, but only because of reflex. I swallow automatically the moment the liquid hits the back of my throat, and then I spend the next several seconds shuddering at the bizarre sensation of it travelling down somewhere deeper in me. I'm not sure I like that particular feeling. But the liquid – _water,_ my brain is whispering to me – soothes the gummy itchiness of my throat, so I keep drinking until the cup is half drained. Then Peeta takes it away, saying I shouldn't drink too much at once or I'll be sick. I already feel sick, but it doesn't seem worth mentioning.

"Better?" he asks, setting the cup on the counter, and I tip my head in consideration. I no longer feel the urge to cough, and though my limbs are still shaky, I can stand on my own now, so I nod. He nods back. "Good. Now –"

Without warning, my lungs expand and contract violently, sending air whooshing out of my nose and mouth in a kind of loud, chuffing cough. I startle, stumbling backwards and nearly falling to the floor before I catch myself on the metal table. _What was that?_

Peeta begins to laugh. I look at him with wide eyes, indignant. Whatever that was, I really don't think it was supposed to happen. Am I malfunctioning – well, more so than I already was? Are my lungs going to collapse? Why does he find this amusing? I huff at him, scowling, and he presses his lips together to silence another giggle.

"I'm sorry," he says, fighting a grin. "It's just, that was really cute."

Somehow, this rubs me the wrong way. _Cute_ means small, dainty, precious, attractive, all things that I am sure I am not.

My frown sets him off laughing again. I find myself crossing my arms, a gesture I've never seen before but somehow am still familiar with.

Then the door clicks open and I jump, scooting away with the help of the counter as Beetee strides back in. Crane isn't with him, this time, but three other people are. Three very brightly colored people. Two women and a man, I think, but their clothes and faces are so ridiculous that I can't be sure. Immediately, one of the women clasps her hands by her face, her heavily lined eyes zeroing in on me, and she squeals, "Oh, look how _real_ it looks! You _really_ have outdone yourself, Beetee, _really_. It's just _precious._ "

Beetee ignores her, choosing instead to scrutinize the water on the floor, the cup on the counter and the wet coat wrapped loosely around me. Then he looks at Peeta, who avoids his gaze. "You gave it water?" he asks, and Peeta nods. "Do you know what that could do to it? It just booted up not half an hour ago. Its systems aren't ready for liquid intake yet."

I want to protest that I feel fine, relatively, but talking is still hard for me. Plus, the presence of Beetee, not to mention the squeaky, colorful strangers, sends my nerves popping with sparks. I retreat farther into the coat.

"At least tell me you ran through the initialization procedures," Beetee continues, and after a moment of silence, Peeta admits, "Not yet. But I'll do it now."

While Peeta gives me a series of simple commands – _touch your nose, good, now touch your pointer finger to your thumb, good, now your middle finger, your ring finger, your pinky, now look up, good, now down, now lift your arms, good, now recite the entire third act of Shakespeare's_ The Twelfth Night _– kidding – sorry, Beetee, yes, I'm focusing – now see if you can walk a few steps, it's all right, I won't let you fall, good –_ the three strangers pull the coat from my body and begin to rub down every inch of my skin with a thick, waxy goop. The sensation of multiple foreign hands, cool and oily, kneading my flesh, sends me wriggling away in disgust, but they chirp at me to hold still, even cheerfully threatening to put me back on the table, so I stop. Every so often they exclaim over various aspects of my appearance. "Look at the eyes – so realistic!" "Oh, and that hair. It's a shame they wasted it on a synth. It's so pretty." "Strong legs, too – this one will be just wonderful in the field."

The blue woman, especially, takes an interest in my silver markings, most likely because her own face bears twin vines of gold that snake around her eyes. "Such a lovely color, even if it is synthetic," she coos, tracing the curve of my cheek where I suppose another marking must be. "Are you sure you aren't taking offers? I know some people who would just _love_ to get their hands on this one."

By the time they're done, my whole body aches and tingles from whatever was in that salve. My skin shines unnaturally under the white lights, which Beetee has turned all the way up again, and I want nothing more than to lie down somewhere and rest. Not the table, though. I do not ever want to lie back down on that table again.

The plump green woman, Octavia I think, yanks at my hair roughly as she pulls it back into something she calls a French braid, "Too keep it out of that pretty face!" I wince, but she takes no notice. She's too busy complimenting Beetee on how I "turned out." I hate her more with every tug.

The colorful trio dresses me in dark-colored clothing that leave my limbs mostly bare – a _tank top_ and _shorts,_ the purple and orange man tells me with a flourish, before letting loose a trilling laugh and pointing out how _absolutely_ _adorable_ I look when I'm confused – and then, with one last round of appreciative squeals, they leave. And I'm alone with Beetee and Peeta again. And again, I want to run. To see where that beige hallway leads. To escape this incessant cold. The clothes they stuffed me into do nothing at all to protect me from the chill. Not like Peeta's coat did.

* * *

They call me Katniss, because of my identification code. Apparently KTNS-12 is a mouthful. I whisper the word to myself as Beetee taps at his tablet. _Kat-niss. Kaat-nisss._ If this word is to be my name now, I must familiarize myself with it.

It's an adequate name, I decide. Easy enough to say, and pleasing to the ear.

Peeta, who has been taking careful measurements of my torso, limbs and head as per Beetee's instructions, glances up at me with a smile. I watch his fingers as he picks up a glass tablet of his own, typing in what I assume are my measurements. For the first few seconds, all I see is lines. Squiggles, really. Then something connects in my brain and the lines become letters and numbers, like the ones in my ID. I recognize a T and an S, among others. And there – my name!

I extend a finger and place it over the K, looking up at Peeta for confirmation. His eyes widen. "Yeah," he says, almost breathlessly. "Yeah, that's right. That's your name."

Beetee leans over my shoulder to see. "Oh, it can already recognize written words. That's good. That's very good." He makes a note on his tablet, then glances up at Peeta expectantly. "Well? Write it down. I always say, the only difference between science and nonsense is taking notes."

Peeta writes it down. I watch the words as they form under his fingertip: _17:47 – She can read!_ I crane my neck to see Beetee's version: _17:47 – Subject displays the ability to locate and recognize its own written identification on a page of other words._

"Today we'll stick with the basics," Beetee continues. Not to me, of course – he never talks to me unless he's giving me an order – but to Peeta. "Basic intelligence assessments, gross and fine motor skills, maybe some procedure memorization."

My stomach clenches nearly before he finishes his sentence, producing a gurgling noise, and I clap my palms over my abdomen. What's wrong with me now?

"Perhaps we should attempt some nutritional intake, first," Beetee says with a half-smile. Then, to me: "Stay here and don't touch anything."

Then he's gone, motioning impatiently for Peeta to join him, and the door closes behind them, cutting off the now-familiar rush of warm air. And for the first time, I'm alone.

I stare at the door handle for several moments, unsure what else to do. In the entirety of my short existence, I've never been completely on my own. Even when I felt so alone on that table, at the very beginning, there were others nearby, watching me. Now there are no eyes on me, and the result is a fleeting, heady rush of… something I can't name. I don't know what to do, but I want to do _something_ , here, now, while no one is observing me. I stumble on indecisive feet, first this way, than that, but there's nowhere to go in this gray-walled room.

Then there's a whisper in the back of my mind that stops me mid-motion. Maybe I am being observed, after all. I'm not sure how or why, but I know what a hidden camera looks like, and what it does. And I am a sort of experiment, if my theory is correct, so it would make sense to keep an eye on me even when no one is around.

I begin to search the room. Running my fingers of the walls, opening the cupboards, examining every nail I find for the telltale glint of a tiny lens. But there's nothing. Eventually I get sidetracked in the farthest corner, where the floor slants slightly towards a drain. I poke at it with a toe, wondering at its use, until the door opens again and Beetee reminds me, "Don't touch."

I shuffle back to the center of the room, frustration swelling in me. Why can't I explore? Why can't I look at things and touch things? Why can't I leave this room?

Peeta calls me over to the counter, where he sets down a tray. "Here you go," he says, then makes an odd face. "Not the most… appetizing of first meals, but I guess we gotta start off slow, huh?"

On the tray are three different objects. There's a cup, like the one Peeta filled with water, and two larger, shallower containers – _bowls._ One is half-full of a steaming liquid, gold-tinted and smelling strongly of… salt, I think. I lean over to get another whiff, catching my braid just before it splashes into the liquid. Yes, salt. The other bowl, which I also sniff at, contains a slimy-looking glob, too thick to be a liquid, too runny to be a solid. I dip a pinky a little ways into it and a translucent rope of gel clings to my nail when I pull it back out. If this is the _nutritional intake_ that's supposed to correct the malfunction in my stomach, I think I'd rather wait and see if the problem fixes itself. But Peeta picks up a spoon from between the bowls and drops it into my palm.

"Eat all of that," Beetee instructs, settling down on a stool to watch.

I'm supposed to eat this? Put it in my mouth and swallow it like I did with the water? No. I don't want to. I don't even know what it is, and while the golden liquid doesn't smell particularly unpleasant, the scent of the colorless stuff makes me recoil. So, instead, I take a sip from the cup to moisten my throat, look straight at Beetee and ask, "Why?"

He blinks, as if surprised, and then makes yet another note on his tablet before saying, "You need proteins and minerals in order to function optimally. The nutritional gel will provide your body with the energy it needs and the broth will help with the digestion."

I still don't want to put it in my mouth. But between Beetee's unwavering gaze and Peeta's hopeful one, I don't have much of a choice.

I go for the yellow liquid Beetee called broth first, putting off the gel for as long as I can. My fingers slip awkwardly around the handle of the spoon, and I can't quite figure out how to get it from the bowl to my lips without spilling it, so after a few tries I forgo the utensil entirely and pick up the bowl like a cup. I see Beetee write _problem solving_ out of the corner of my eye.

I thought the broth would be like water, since it sloshed around in the bowl like water, but it isn't. Not at all. It tastes the same way it smells: salty and… _meaty_ is the right word, I think. It's hot, nearly to the point of pain, but I decide this is a good thing. It helps combat the chill, after all, and I could get used to the greasy quality of the liquid for that. I would swallow the whole thing in a few gulps if Peeta didn't insist on repeating, "Whoa, there. Slow down. Little sips."

"If it chokes it chokes," Beetee says after the fourth time. "And then we'll see if the gag reflex works."

"It does," Peeta answers shortly, to which Beetee replies with an indignant, "Why didn't you tell me?"

I almost finish the water, too, before I realize that I might need it to wash away the taste of the gel. And, speaking of the gel, I'm going to have to eat it at some point. I pick up the spoon again, taking more time than necessary to position it between my fingers, and sigh. Here goes.

I dig the spoon into the goop, bring it to my lips as carefully as I can and drop the stuff onto my tongue. And then I spit it back out onto the tray, my face wrinkling involuntarily. _Ew._

It takes them seven minutes, according to the timer on Beetee's tablet, to convince me to try again. At last I give in, scooping out as much as I can at once. I figure, the faster I get it past my tongue, the less I have to taste it.

Peeta chatters while I force down spoonful after spoonful. "Just wait until you adjust to solid foods. They give me free range of the kitchen downstairs, when they're feeling nice, so I usually make some sort of dessert on Fridays. To share with the whole building, you know, since they could use some cheering up. Cupcakes, brownies, tarts, pudding. I can't wait to show you."

"Talk less, observe more," Beetee chides. "This is a synth warrior prototype, not a friend."

"You were the one who said she would benefit from hearing a lot of human speech," Peeta counters even as I take a sudden and intense interest in the empty broth bowl, my cheeks heating. I lift one hand to my face, feeling the unnatural warmth under my skin, and add it to my growing list of minor malfunctions.

Once I finish the gel and chug the whole cup of water before Peeta can stop me, Beetee adjusts the metal table so it lies flat, then rolls up three stools. There, with his elbows resting on the metal surface I refuse to touch, he props up his tablet and says, "Start recording." The glass screen blooms with color, and there I see a reflection of the room, as if there's a little mirror cradled against Beetee's shoulder and not a tablet. I see the polished surface of the table, the wall behind us, Peeta sitting next to me and –

I sway forward, leaning toward the device as much as I can without overbalancing and slumping onto the table. I lift a hand to make sure, and when the girl in the reflection matches my actions exactly, I reach out and tug the tablet from Beetee's hands. He protests for a moment, then relents, and I hold the device at arms' length to analyze my own face. My skin and hair is just as I observed earlier, except now my hair is bound up in a long, woven tail instead of falling loosely around my frame. My fingers ghost across my left cheekbone, where one of those shimmering silver marks curves past my eye.

My eyes are silver, too.

I have a small, round nose and an equally small, round chin, and fierce brows that lend me a sense of seriousness even when I'm not frowning. I am plain, compared to the colorful women. Simple. Not as soft. I smile without meaning to, pleased with my appearance, before I remember that I can't let Beetee know that I have the capacity to feel pleased at all.

Beetee pries the tablet out of my hands before I'm ready, muttering, "Now, now, we have work to do."

For the next several hours, Beetee gives me a series of increasingly complicated tests. First it's "What's fifteen times two minus five?"

Then it's "Put together this puzzle."

Then it's "Solve this cipher."

Solve this, answer this, rearrange this, calculate this. Gradually, as the assignments become more difficult, I begin to enjoy myself. The tests can be frustrating, especially the riddles, since I have so little prior experience on which to base my reasoning, but none of them stymie me for long. I have, according to Beetee, an excellent mind. The compliment nearly makes me smile again, but I manage to keep my face blank. The tablet is useful in this respect – I keep an eye on my reflection, so I'm able to see when I express too much emotion and can smother it accordingly.

After that it's physical tests. Stand on your toes, catch this pen, hop on one foot from here to there, touch your toes with your fingers, throw this cup from one hand to the other. My body is unused to the physical exertion, but the resulting ache is satisfying. The stretch and pull of my muscles, the occasional pop of a joint, the hot flush that rises under my skin, all of it resonates within me, humming somewhere within my bones. I am strong. And, when Beetee tells me to throw an engraved steel pen and it sticks in the wall with a solid _thwack_ , I get the feeling that I am stronger than they thought I would be. Beetee's eyebrows ascend, chasing his receding hairline, and Peeta grunts, "Whoa."

The pen quivers. It struck exactly where I meant it to. A savage kind of delight surges through me, and this time I don't bother suppressing my smile.

He stops letting me throw things after that.

* * *

 "One last thing," Peeta says through a yawn. "One more, and then we're done 'till tomorrow."

Good. I'm tired. And it's not just the lactic acid that simmers through my limbs, keeping me drooped against the wall. My thoughts themselves are sluggish. Something deep and primal urges me to find a sheltered place and bed down. Under the sink, perhaps – the cupboards look large enough for me to fit, if I empty them, and though the tight confines might not be comfortable they would at least be secure. Hidden. Safe.

But then I remember cold and light and noise and I make myself stand up straight, shaking myself to remain alert.

The one last thing, as it turns out, is another person. A girl, much younger than the colorful women. Barely more than a child. I take her chin in my hand as soon as she gets close enough, tipping her head this way and that to get a good look at her. Her coloring is similar to Peeta's, but paler still, her gold hair so bright it looks silver where the light hits it. Like mine, it's braided, but into two tails instead of one.

She stands still for my inspection, her eyes flicking over my face in turn. When I step away she introduces herself as Prim. Her nametag reads _Primrose Everdeen, Junior Medic,_ and I have to wonder why they brought in a nurse-in-training, rather than a fully fledged doctor. Maybe I'm just a chance for her to practice. Maybe they figured they didn't need a real doctor for someone only half organic.

"And you're…" She glances down at her own small tablet. "KTNS-12?"

"Katniss," I correct her quietly, and she gives me a smile as bright as her hair.

"That's a flower, you know."

And as soon as she says it, I do know. My brain conjures up the image for me: Three small, white petals daubed with spots of deep red at the center. Long, spindly stalks. Arrow-shaped leaves. Edible tubers.

_Suitable for consumption during survival missions,_ something in me whispers, but I disregard the information as useless.

_After all,_ I think to myself wryly as Primrose wriggles her hands into a pair of stretchy, blue-tinted gloves, _who needs tubers when you have nutritional gel?_

As it turns out, Primrose is here to conduct yet more tests. She holds up a small, bright light, which I flinch from, and flashes it in each eye. Then she tries to make me sit on the table, and when it becomes clear I won't go near it, she instead guides me to the counter to tap at my knees. She wraps something black and crinkling around my arm and tightens it, watching a creeping dial, then has me take deep breaths while she holds something round to my back and chest. It all seems so pointless, and my eyes are growing itchy with the urge to close, but I like Primrose. She smiles at me, though her halting movements make it clear she's tired, too, and she chatters about little things while she works. I don't want to upset her by being uncooperative.

Beetee, meanwhile, is having a field day. He circles me with his tablet held out in front of him, recording every moment, and whispers observations into the screen. Peeta taps a note into his tablet every once in a while, when he remembers to pick his chin up off his hand and open his eyes. At one point, while Primrose presses two fingers into the soft spot under my jaw, where my blood pulses near the skin, he leans far enough forward for me to read what's on the screen.

_I'm too sleepy to take notes, I've been up since four a.m., please just let me go to bed,_ it reads. A snort of amusement escapes me before I can stop it. Thankfully, the snort sticks in my throat, sending me off on another coughing fit and disguising the sound.

Peeta drags himself from his stool to bring me a cup of water.

Finally, Primrose says, "Nearly done," and leads me to the corner with the drain. There she helps me out of my clothes and rolls up her sleeves before popping open a panel in the wall and twisting the knob within.

A shock of cold liquid bursts from the ceiling, licking at my legs, and I jump back with a squeak.

"Oops," she says, twisting the knob further. "Sorry. Hold on. There, that should be better."

I'm reluctant to step under the stream of water, but once I do, I don't think I'll be leaving. It's warm now – _so_ warm, and engulfing my whole body, front and back and sides all at once. The water rinses away the last traces of the goop they rubbed into my skin, and Primrose helps the process along by scrubbing down my body with another kind of goop, this one much less waxy and much more fragrant. It froths into tiny, white bubbles as she rubs, then rinses off easily, vanishing down the drain and leaving a sweet, earthy smell behind. _Lavender._

Once I'm thoroughly rinsed, the water shuts off, much to my disappointment, and a panel on the floor blasts hot air at me, drying me within seconds. My hair remains damp, the braid loosening and fraying with every movement.

"All done," Primrose announces, sliding the tank top back over my head and the shorts back up my legs. She collects her various instruments and tucks them into a small, white case. "Thanks, Beetee. And thank you, Katniss."

Beetee inclines his head, and I chance a smile in her direction.

Once she's gone, Peeta pulls himself up from his seat, arching his back with a groan. "We done?" he asks, and Beetee flaps a hand at him with a short, "Yes, go, go. Be back here at six tomorrow."

Peeta says, "I know," and tugs open the door.

I've taken barely half a step before it closes again. Leaving me in the room. With Beetee.

I don't know why I assumed I'd be going with him. It was a silly assumption, really. I have yet to leave this room, and Peeta obviously has somewhere else to be. A safe place of his own to rest. He never made any indication that he would stay with me, and yet this abandonment stings.

The dull twinge lodges itself in my chest, refusing to fade away even as Beetee sets aside his tablet and starts fiddling with something at the counter.

"On the table," he says, turning, and I balk. After a moment, he repeats, "KTNS-12, lie down on the table."

"No."

I expect his eyes to harden with annoyance, or even anger. Instead he tilts his head and mutters, "Interesting."

Then he takes me by the elbow and pulls me to the table anyway. My pulse flutters somewhere in my esophagus, choking me, and my legs wobble, but I don't resist as he guides me onto the icy surface.

_I'm not afraid,_ I tell myself as he adjusts my arms and legs and tilts the table to a forty-five degree angle. _I'm not afraid._ He rolls a tall, slim, hooked pole out from behind me, taking a moment to check the bag of liquid that swings from it. _I'm not afraid._ I guess what comes next before it happens, but the sight of the needle still makes my lungs heave.

I look away, but I still feel the stab of pain, over as soon as it begins. "This will help you sleep," Beetee says, and it's so unexpected, this explanation, that I look back at him. I don't recall him ever bothering to explain anything to me, except for the time I asked him.

"You're at war," I say. It isn't a question. I don't know much yet, but I do have a fairly strong grasp of logic, and it wouldn't be logical to create a prototype for synthetic warriors unless you had need of them.

He gazes at me for a while, silent and unmoving. And then he says, "Yes. We are."

Then he leaves, turning the lights nearly all the way down as he goes.

I count to ten, to make sure he isn't coming back in, and then I reach down and tear the tape off my elbow. The needle comes with it, ripping a few millimeters of flesh along the way. I freeze, shocked by the pain and the bright red that wells up and runs over, trailing a ruby path down my arm. Then my pre-stocked brain kicks in, deciding it's too small for stitches and too deep for a band-aid. A bandage it is. I swing my legs off the table and push away from it, going to rummage in the cupboards for more squares of gauze like I saw Beetee use the first time a needle left my vein. I know it's impossible, but I can still feel the unyielding press of slippery-smooth metal against my back.

I tape a thick square of gauze over the wound with little trouble. Then there's nothing left for me to do but pace. My feet scuff against the floor. I'm exhausted even without the help of whatever was in that IV, but I can't let myself sleep. It's too foreign, and at once, too familiar. I was asleep before I woke up here, or at least I must have been. Or was I dead? Can one be dead before they are alive? Could they be the same thing, death and sleep, the only difference being that one is temporary and the other is forever?

No, I cannot sleep. At least, not here. What if I open my eyes and I'm back where I started, cold and vulnerable all over again while Beetee and Seneca and Peeta watch my systems initialize? Or, more disturbing yet – what if I simply don't wake up? I only just became aware today; I can't die yet. There's so much I want to see, so much I want to discover. All I've seen so far is this small, gray room.

And then it hits me, and it's so obvious I wonder how I didn't think of it the moment Peeta left. He never said I wasn't supposed to follow him. In fact, he probably meant for me to. Yes. Of course he must have. He's been with me since I opened my eyes, only leaving to fetch food. He kept me warm. He defended me when Beetee said something harsh.

Warmth, food, protection – these things mesh in my mind, triggering something in that deep, primal, definitely-organic corner of my brain. Peeta is my… The word won't come. Caretaker? That's almost it. Oh well. The word doesn't matter, only what it means. And it means that I'm in the wrong place.

Anyway, Beetee never said I had to stay here.

My brain – the synthetic part, probably – is already supplying me with the steps to picking a lock by the time I set my hand on the doorknob. But, as it turns out, I don't need to. The knob turns with a chorus of soft clicks, the door eases open and the rush of warm air flows over me.

Something new is singing through me, staving off my need for sleep. It's bubbly and light, as if it might lift me off my feet and into the air. I think it's excitement.

With an anxious little hop, I step out into the hallway.

* * *

 Tracking Peeta was surprisingly easy. Although, not all that surprising, if I stop to think about it. I knew how to assess and dress a wound and how to pick a lock. It shouldn't strike me as strange that the skill of tracking, of hunting, of following and _finding_ is in me as well.

The path was simple. I saw him turn right when he left the gray room, so I turned that way as well. When the beige hallway ended, after countless closed doors and plastic-curtained windows, I had three options: turn right, turn left or step onto what my brain identified as an _elevator_. My gut said he wasn't on that floor, so I tapped at the button beside the closed doors until they slid open.

I knew that was the correct path as soon as I entered the gently humming space. His scent lingered there, faint but unmistakable.

The buttons proved to be a problem. Which floor did he choose? There were so many buttons, all bronze and gleaming. Part of me wanted to simply push them all and see where I ended up. Another part of me was, thankfully, more sensible, and I settled on squatting on the balls of my feet, scanning the buttons with a careful eye. Each and every one of them was pristine, shiny, very obviously recently scrubbed free of fingerprints. All but one. Floor twelve.

Now, I skip down the dark hallway, nearly laughing out loud. They couldn't have made this easier for me. The plaque next to the elevator read _Staff Quarters_ , confirming my choice of floors, and every single door is labeled with a name. The alphabet falls away behind me, and I'm starting to wish I had found out Peeta's last name when I reach the Ms, and there it is. _Mellark, Peeta._

This door isn't locked, either, and I didn't expect it to be. He probably anticipated my arrival and left it unlocked accordingly. It swings open soundlessly and I slip inside, being careful not to make a noise when I close it behind me.

The space I find myself in is nearly pitch black and blessedly warm and begging for exploration. But now that I'm here, I'm reminded of why I came in the first place. Sleep. Safe sleep, not drugged sleep. A cozy nook in the darkness and another breathing body to snuggle up to. And all at once, the burst of energy is gone, drained away to nothing and leaving me wearier than I was in gray room. The promise of a comfortable nest urges me forward, longing softening the backs of my knees until I stumble. I can hear his breathing, see the vague outline of the table he's sleeping on. Table? No, something else. _Bed._ I put out my hands and the heat of his body touches my palms.

Moving as cautiously as I can, so I don't wake him and deprive him of a few precious moments of rest, I lift a corner of the coverings and slide underneath, and, oh. _Oh,_ it's warm, and soft, and the smell of him is everywhere. I wriggle closer, daring to touch my feet to his calves, and my head sinks into the pillow beside his.

Already I can feel myself fading away into unconsciousness, and this time, I don't fear it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This cover was made for my the the wonderful loving-mellark over on Tumblr. :)  
> http://33.media.tumblr.com/f6bf96fbabe70c50b2ba5f459ab83db9/tumblr_inline_nqybn27dpK1skkb2o_540.gif


	2. Checkmate

_I'm still here._

The thought drifts through my mind, fleeting and lazy as the barely perceptible bursts of warm air that lick across my forehead. My legs stir, restless, swishing between rumpled, skin-warmed cloth, and then I remember: I am alive. I am a synth. I am Katniss. And I am nestled in Peeta Mellark's bed. After the yawning emptiness I woke up to yesterday, these precious few memories seem like a feast. A veritable glut of recollections, all jumbled up and hazy in my sleep-smeared brain. The tests, the broth, the door, the color yellow. Now, when I reach out with my mind, memories come to me without any effort at all. It's so unexpectedly pleasant, having an identity, that for a long time I do nothing but bask in it.

Gradually, I become more alert. My surroundings begin to take shape one piece at a time. A noise here, a scent there. Somewhere down the hall, a door opens and closes with a rhythmic _squeak-squeak-whump_. The gentle bursts of air touch the strands of hair at my temple, sending them skittering over my skin. Bits of light, pale and wavering, flutter over my eyelids.

All at once, I remember my desire to explore Peeta's room. I still have no idea of what kind of space I'm in, other than the smell, sound and feel of the bed. But exploring means leaving the nest – _bed,_ it's a bed – and I'm not yet willing to pull myself from the swathes of fabric that, over the course of the night, have molded to the shape of my body.

With a high-pitched moan, I extend my arms and legs, every muscle in my body pulling deliciously taut before melting back against the mattress. My hands go to my eyes, fingertips massaging the seam where upper and lower lids meet, and then they blink open.

The shape of another pair of eyes makes me start, imaginary hackles prickling at the back of my neck before I register the rest of the scene. The eyes belong to Peeta, not a predator. He's lying on his side, the way I found him last night, his body maybe a foot from my own. Too far to feel the heat of his skin, but close enough for the warmth to pool in the pocket of air between us.

"Good morning," he says, carefully, his lips forming the words as if they're made of glass.

"Yes," I agree. My fingers curl against the pillow and his eyes follow the motion.

In the moments of stillness that follow, the muffled noises of other rooms seem to swell and fill the silence. The screech and gurgle of pipes overlaps with clinks, thumps, footsteps and the sigh of door hinges. Every so often I catch the melody of a human voice, muted and indistinct through the walls. The audible evidence of human life swirls around us, but the room itself is quiet, sealed away from the bustle of activity outside. The only noises emanating from within are two unhurried heartbeats and the flap of curtains against the wall.

Then Peeta eases into a fairly upright position and scrubs one hand through his hair. He hasn't taken his eyes off me, nor have I looked away from him, and for several seconds we study one another. But something is wrong. The slant of his shoulders is too precise. The muscles at his jaw are strung just a bit too tight. The way his fingers trace tiny circles on the blankets comes across as a nervous habit, not a placid gesture. It takes me a moment to assemble these things into a cohesive whole, but once I do, I realize why it feels wrong. His body language is inquisitive but reserved, even tense. My own muscles clench in response, my mind flitting about for an indication of danger.

"Is… something… wrong?" I ask, struggling slightly to form the words when my brain hasn't fully reinitialized yet.

He visibly jumps and forces his shoulders down. "No. No, nothing's wrong."

I eye him skeptically.

"I just didn't expect… for you to come," he decides at last, nodding to himself like he's pleased with the arrangement of words.

I blink, bemused. "Why not?"

He blinks back at me, brows scrunching before a smile emerges from the corners of his mouth. The knot of tension in my gut unravels all at once at the expression. "I guess that is the question, isn't it?" he says cheerfully, bouncing up from the mattress and onto his feet. He retrieves his tablet from a wire-frame table by the bed and, hiding a yawn behind his arm, begins to poke at it.

I, meanwhile, roll to my side to inspect the room. The walls are gray, but not dark-shiny-gray like the cold room. It's a lighter gray, whispers of yellow brought out by the bars of golden light that escape the curtains. Here and there, scraps of paper flutter in clumps. Drawings, I realize. Curiosity overriding reluctance, I crawl to the edge of the bed and stand. Crossing the room is a test in and of itself. I am distracted by everything from the metal desk in the corner to the grainy texture of the carpet on the soles of my feet. By the time I reach the drawings I barely spare them a glance before my legs carry me away again to look at something else.

I want to see everything, feel everything. The texture of the walls, peppered with miniscule pores, is so different from the nubby roughness of the carpet that it's hard to believe they exist so close to one another. The papers on the wall are thin and brittle, edges ragged. The curtains are heavy and smooth. My clothes are wrinkled and flimsy.

Peeta ducks into an adjacent room as I look around. I glimpse the white gleam of porcelain just before the door closes – a _sink._ When he emerges, his worn sleep-clothes – _pajamas –_ have been replaced by an outfit nearly identical to the one he wore yesterday. Plain gray slacks and shirt under the white coat I was briefly wrapped in. His face lights up when he finds me sitting cross-legged below the window, staring past the curtains I pushed open.

"Oh, you're still here," he says. "I thought maybe you would have left."

I shake my head before turning back to the window. Where would I go? Back to the gray room?

Peeta comes to stand beside me, following my line of sight through the window. There isn't much to see except a dull concrete wall some ten feet away, interspersed with more curtained windows, but the view entrances me nonetheless. Striated shafts of buttery light slant into the room, burning a warm square into the carpet, and it's in the very center of that square that I sit, face lifted. The light is so warm I swear I feel it touch my cheeks, like a pair of hands. _Sunlight,_ my mind tells me. It's nice, so nice, but the smell… Oh, the smell is wonderful. Here, the breeze flows over me freely, sweeping strands of my hair back from my face and permeating my thoughts. At least a dozen distinct scents mesh and run together, and my brain identifies them gladly. _Earth, warm pavement, rain, gasoline, green growth, metal…_ I want to be closer. I want to be there, beyond the window. I want to see beyond the gray walls that perpetually surround me.

Peeta allows me five minutes to sit by the window, watching that tiny chip of blue sky that's just visible between walls, before he coaxes me away.

"We're already late," he says apologetically as I glance back at the unhurried waving of the curtains. "Beetee's going to bite both our heads off."

I look at him in alarm and he quickly amends – "I mean, he'll be annoyed with us. He won't really – that's just an expression."

I wash my face in front of Peeta's sink, taking the opportunity to familiarize myself with my own features. At his suggestion, I brush my teeth as well – another activity I perform perfectly despite having had no conscious knowledge of it before. The abrasive paste is the first thing I've tasted that makes my mouth water, though that's more due to the overpowering intensity of the flavor – _spearmint,_ the bottle says _–_ than anything else.

My tongue roves over the backs of my teeth, feeling the glossy smoothness, even after Peeta leads me out of his room and down the hall.

"Ready?" he asks me, thumbing the button to summon the elevator. "We have a lot to do today."

* * *

Floor six is awash with activity. I stop short two steps from the elevator, bombarded with more voices and faces than I ever expected to see in one place. I try to count – five, ten, twenty – but they all move so quickly that it's hard to keep track. Instinctively, I shrink behind Peeta, drawing my arms in close to my torso. My mind whirrs, spitting out a jumble of identifying nouns and adjectives I barely have time to digest.

_Blond – tall – skinny – wristwatch – pigtails – glasses – brunette – red – white – heels –short – makeup – chubby – gloves – clipboard – mug – braids – headphones – beard – suit – coat – pale – skirt._

It's too much. I lower my face into my hands and try to block out the babble of voices, some childish instinct telling me that if I cover my eyes and keep very still they won't be able to see me. The sounds, the colors, the smells all besiege my senses in a crackling deluge and tear at my psyche as if with claws. There's so much, it's too much, it's too _much_ and I can't focus, can't get away, can't run –

"Mellark," a gruff voice barks very close by, bringing a wave of stinging fumes with it. "You're late, boy. We've lost track of the… Well, son of a bitch."

I chance a peek between my fingers. A paunchy, bleary-eyed man looks back at me, tipping the contents of a strange, flat bottle – a _flask –_ into his mouth. I glare at him and then snap my fingers together again just as the man gives a rough chuckle.

"You're gonna have a helluva time explaining this one, boy," the man says. Then, raising his voice to a hoarse shout, "Okay, people, crisis averted! Everybody get back to your stations!"

Others take up the cry – "They found it! Go back to work!" – and I hear the crowd thinning, footsteps carrying the overwhelming noise and color away in streams. Gradually, as the stimuli dissipates, my trembling muscles begin to unclench. My respiratory system can function properly now that there's not so _much_ all pressing in on me.

Then the drinking man speaks again.

"You know, I think this one's gonna be different," he mutters, and I can feel his gaze like a hot beam of sunlight on my hands. "This one's got…" There's a tinny slosh as he imbibes more of the noxious fluid. "… spunk."

* * *

 By the time most of the bustling crowd has dispersed, vanishing into other areas of the building like rabbits into a warren – _rabbits, warren,_ two more ideas without memory or experience to back them – Beetee has already herded me into another room and shoved a food tray onto my lap. It's not _the_ gray room, but it is _a_ gray room, directly across the hall from the one I spent yesterday in. The long, narrow space is mostly occupied by an equally long table, its surface flickering with charts and digital notepads. The remaining scientists sit on one side of the table, facing me in a straight line, grim as the chess pieces Beetee tested me with yesterday. 

I don't have a place on either side of the table. My seat is a three-legged stool upon a little platform, lit up starkly from above. Here I perch, balancing the tray on my knees, while they discuss my motives for "leaving my appointed bounds." Peeta admits, steadily but with a bashful tremor in his voice, to finding me in his quarters, which sets off a whole new round of debates. One scientist thinks I must have misunderstood an instruction. Another suggests that I've singled Peeta out as a mate, which makes his skin turn deep pink. Each observer has their own theory. None of them bother to ask me.

I try my best to follow their conversation, but I'm continually sidetracked by the tenor of a voice, the lazy kicking of a crossed leg, the twitch of an eyelid. Each person before me is so different, not just in appearance but in every way imaginable. One speaks in clipped, lyrical phrases, adding an artificial trill to the end of each sentence. Another's voice rolls in predictable ups and downs. Another gives a little cough every time they begin to speak. I absorb these details with relish, eager to learn anything I can about those who share the world with me.

"Finish the nutritional gel," Beetee calls, and I scowl at the tray on my lap. I detest eating.

To distract myself from the stale, bitter taste of the gel, I turn my attention back to the scientists, examining them one by one. They really are like chess pieces, I decide.

There's Beetee, of course, claiming the King's position in the very center of everyone. There are nine people before me, one too many for a chess set, so I decide that there must be two Queens, one on either side of him: Peeta on the right and a severe-looking woman with colorless eyes on the left. The drunken man, whom they call Haymitch, sits at the left Bishop position. His counterpart is an obnoxiously bubbly woman with pink hair and a matching pink lab coat, whose bejeweled nametag reads _Ms. Effervescent Trinket_ in curly script. The Knights are two women, both finely-boned and poised but opposites in every other way. The leftmost wears mint-green scrubs and her coloring is pale, almost sickly under the fizzling electric lights. Primrose sits at her side in the left Rook position – I suppose the pale woman must be her mother. They have the same blue eyes and the same plump mouth. The rightmost Knight is dark-skinned. A sensible business suit is visible beneath her lab coat, and every so often she nudges the Rook next to her, a boy no older than Primrose. He nods and promises he's paying attention, but as soon as the Knight – Seeder, apparently – turns away, he goes back to scribbling digital notes to his fellow Rook and flicking them across the table to her.

I find myself wondering what piece I am, until I realize: I am, of course, a pawn.

A new voice cuts through the excited chatter. It's the gray Queen, her slush-colored eyes fixed on my face even as she addresses Beetee. "Doctor, I'm sure this is a very intriguing development, but thus far you've failed to address what it might mean on the long run. This asset needs to be contained. If you are unable to control it, it could endanger everyone in this building, not to mention the project."

"Of course," Beetee defers. "My apologies. We didn't anticipate behavioral anomalies this soon."

"Well, obviously you need to adjust your expectations." She stands, rounding the table with quick strides, and steps up onto the platform. I tense, unsure what to do, and glance to Beetee and Peeta for guidance. Then one long-fingered hand clamps around my upper arm. She turns the limb until the delicate veins at my wrist face the light. "What happened here?" she demands. More long fingers pluck and prod at the inside of my elbow, where the square of gauze rests.

"Um," says Beetee.

"Uh," says Peeta.

The gray Queen turns to them. "You don't know?"

"Well," Beetee hems.

She looks back to me, and the urge to curl up and vanish into myself comes slithering back through the spokes of my ribs. "What happened here?" she says, and, as always when someone actually speaks to me, it takes me a moment to remember that I'm supposed to respond. And by that time, the Queen – her nametag flashes _Coin, Alma_ – has already grown impatient. Without warning, she takes hold of one corner of the gauze, where a bit of the tape has curled up, and tears it from my arm. The skin underneath flares with a wave of painful tingles and a murmur of pain rolls in my throat. Undeterred, Coin examines the wound – but no, there is no wound. Only a rusty smudge and the pale pink of puckered, healing flesh.

"Tell me how this happened," she asks again, but I'm still staring at the place where a wound should be, but isn't. How strange it is to know that the wound has closed already, when the scent of dried blood still wafts past my face. Doesn't it take longer for human flesh to knit, even for such a small wound? I think it does. I'm almost certain.

Ah, but then, I keep forgetting. I'm not human. Not completely.

"KTNS-12, I asked you a question."

I know. But, I decide, I won't answer. Her grip is too tight, and her tone is too sharp, and I just want her to go back to her fancy, padded chair and leave me alone.

"You said it's capable of speech, yes?"

"Yes," Beetee answers as I attempt to twist my arm free. Her grasp only tightens, making me wince, and she meets my uncomfortable scowl with her own strict one.

"So, it's not a matter of inability," she muses. "It just doesn't want to answer."

 _Spot on,_ I respond in my mind. At last, Coin releases my arm. I tuck it against my belly with a resentful huff.

"Ladies and gentlemen, might I remind you that, while the past few days have proven to be a very large step in the right direction, Project Mockingjay is far from over. Now that we've determined that organic-synthetic hybrids are viable, it's time to turn to the next big questions: are they trainable? Can they be used in combat? In espionage? Yes, KTNS-12 has survived its first day out of the gestation chamber, but that's only half the battle."

Out of all the strange phrases and ideas, I catch at a half-familiar one: _mockingjay._ My brain conjures up an image of a bird, obsidian black and slender, with splashes of white under its wings. A hybrid. One part mockingbird, a songbird that has been around as long as humans, and one part jabberjay, an animal designed in a laboratory. _Useful during field missions for their ability to recognize and copy melodies,_ my mind whispers.

"I think it's pretty good!" the young Rook pipes up from his corner of the table. All eyes turn to him and he reddens. "I – I mean – it's farther than you've ever gotten before, right? Because the first two died while they were still on life support, right?"

My head pops up so quickly that my neck pops. _First two?_

Seeder hushes the boy, but Coin nods. "Yes, Rory, that is correct. It is… pretty good. But we can't let ourselves celebrate too early. There's still a lot of work to do. And," she says, turning her gaze on Beetee, "As I have said before, our first priority should be making sure we can control this asset. Without obedience, a soldier is nothing but a liability."

There's a smattering of assenting mutters.

"Could start with positive reinforcement," Seeder says, tracing a note on the tabletop.

"Positive?" Coin shakes her head. "Too time-consuming. Not reliable enough. Negative reinforcement establishes connections in the brain much more quickly, and time is of the essence."

I'm still trying to tease the meaning out of these unfamiliar words when she says, "KTNS-12, tell me how you got the injury on your arm."

I know what positive and negative mean, of course, and I know the word _reinforcement_ , but smashed together the words are all but meaningless. I know what it means, I _know_ I do, but I'm having trouble accessing the information. Could she be referring to the reinforced organic pieces of me? Could –

Something collides with my cheekbone with enough force to snap my head around. My fingers go limp with shock and the tray, empty bowls and all, crashes to the podium. A throbbing pain manifests itself in the entire left side of my face and my hands come up to cradle it. Cries ring out from the table, among them Rory's squeak of, "Hey!" and Primrose's wail of, "Don't!"

I'm still trying to process what happened.

 _She… hit me?_ The thought is sluggish, filtered as it is through surprise and confusion. And inexperience. No one has ever struck me before. The sensation, like everything else, is new and fascinating and jarringly foreign.

"When I ask you a question you will answer it," Coin declares, and all at once my spine straightens. I drop my hands into my lap, square my shoulders and meet her gaze head-on. For the first time, anger pumps through me – not frustration or annoyance, but real, hot, quick _anger_. It surges through my temples, hardens the muscles of my back and sends a hot flush up my neck.

 _No,_ I say with my body. _Back off._

Alarm flashes through those colorless eyes as Coin realizes her mistake, and instinct keeps my gaze locked on hers until she turns away in defeat.

I will not be a pawn, I decide. I am a Queen in my own right, standing alone but proud on my side of the board. Or, at least, I will be in time, once I have experience to match knowledge.

And then Peeta lunges around the table with a shout of, "What the hell do you think you're doing?" and I remember that I am not alone. Beetee never was flanked by two Queens. My King was simply standing on the wrong square.

Peeta fusses over my cheek, his jaw knotted with tension, while Coin censures Beetee. Seeder and Haymitch join forces to shout her down until she sinks into her own chair, cool and collected as always but clearly losing the battle.

"This creature is learning about its place in the world," Seeder insists for the third time. "One of the worst things we can do is to teach it that we are its enemies. We must present ourselves as allies and mentors, and unwarranted punishment will do nothing but turn it against us."

"She's not a goddamn attack dog," Haymitch adds, and my eyes flick up at him. _She,_ he said. Not it. She. For a moment, he meets my gaze, and I swear I see his chin dip in a nearly imperceptible nod. After a moment of hesitation, I tilt my head in reply.

Beetee hastily steers the conversation towards other subjects, claiming that they can "determine the cause of KTNS-12's deviation at a later time." He then calls Peeta back to his place at the table. Just before he leaves, Peeta's thumb rubs over my cheekbone in an almost unconscious gesture, and my breath catches somewhere in my throat, refusing to flow past my lips until he reaches his chair. After the harsh impact of Coin's palm, that small, soothing touch makes me want to follow him and curl up on his knees, hiding between his arms like I did yesterday. But I know, somewhere in the cold, calculating part of my mind, that if just leaving the gray room was cause for such debate, snuggling up on Peeta's lap can only lead to trouble.

It's difficult for me, denying this raw impulse, but I force it down. If I want to survive here, I have to learn to mask my emotions and suppress my desires while others are watching me. No matter how badly I want to cry or smile or scream, I can't allow myself that luxury. The scientists wanted an intelligent, unfeeling flesh machine, so that's what I have to be.

 _They can't know,_ I remind myself. _You aren't supposed to feel anything. You can't let them find out or who knows what they'll do to you._

So I sit, and I wait, and I listen. And, as I listen, I learn. I learn that they uploaded information into the synthetic parts of my mind while I was still just a loose agglomeration of parts floating in a gestation chamber – basic skills like walking and talking, mission protocols, survival techniques – so they wouldn't have to take the time to teach it to me. I learn that the organic parts of me were grown from stem cells, the genetic code painstakingly pieced together by Beetee and a lab of other top scientists in a process that took years. And I learn that I share much of that genetic code with my two unfortunate sisters, both dead before they ever opened their eyes. I wonder, had they survived, what they would have thought of me. Would they have had emotions, too? Is the glitch an intrinsic part of our shared DNA, or simply the result of some anomaly in the structure of my own brain? Could we have worked together to find an answer?

But, then again, if either one of them had survived, there would have been no reason for the scientists to try again and create me.

The last thing I learn, before the meeting is adjourned, is they are running out of time. And something in my gut tells me that while I am not their first attempt at an organic-synthetic-hybrid humanoid, I will be their last. The war on the other side of the country is growing worse, and their government is desperate for results. This much is clear by the way Coin, whom I now know to be a government representative and not an actual part of the scientists' team, pushes for immediate and decisive action. "Project Mockingjay must move ahead," she repeats, even as the sparkly, pink woman frets about schedules and plans and disrupting procedures.

At last, they file out into the hallway, leaving me alone on the podium. Beetee remembers to point at me and say, "Stay here," this time, which sparks a hint of amusement in me. He's learning.

I'm kneeling beside the stool, gathering the scattered remnants of the food tray, when the low tones of Peeta's voice reach me through the door. Another, more gravelly voice replies. I glance up, turn my attention back to the tray, and then fully process what I saw: the door hasn't closed all the way. The tiniest sliver remains between the door and the frame, allowing for fragments of sound and color to seep through. But not quite enough. I can make out the rhythm and inflections of their words, but not the words themselves. The bits and pieces of their conversation tempt me, igniting within me the desire to know what they're saying.

I set the tray down on the stool as quietly as I can and creep around the table.

"… already heard what everyone else thinks," Peeta says as I hover an inch from the door. "I want to know what you think."

"You don't know?" Haymitch says.

"If I did would I be asking you?"

Haymitch sighs, and through the fissure I see a blur of movement, as if he's shifting to lean against the wall. "It's because," he says slowly, "she's imprinted on you, like a damn baby bird."

Peeta is silent for a moment and my fingers twist together until they turn splotchy. They're talking about me. And of course they are. I've been the subject of debate for the past hour, and Peeta has more reason to wonder about my actions than any of the others. After all, it wasn't _their_ bed I slept in.

"Think of it this way," Haymitch continues, "If you woke up with no memories and no idea what was going on, who would you follow around like a lovesick puppy? Probably whoever you felt safest with, yeah?"

I dare to turn and fit my eye to the crack, just in time to see a slight flush sweep through Peeta's face. He ducks his head, but it's not enough to hide the shy smile that touches his lips. "Probably. So… what do I do?"

"You're asking me?"

Peeta chuckles. "Right. Nurturing. Not really your thing."

"Look, kid, you're doing fine. Just… Try not to get too attached to this one, yeah? I know how broken up you always get when they end up kicking the bucket."

"That's no way to think," Peeta scolds him. "Every living thing needs support and encouragement to develop properly. It's scientifically proven. Distancing ourselves from the mockingjays to avoid disappointment will only hurt them, and the project by extension."

The words carry the practiced cadence of a mantra. I envision Peeta standing next to Beetee in a lab, repeating those words over a petri dish or a gestation chamber. Supporting and encouraging the hybrid synths before they – we – were even recognizable as humanoid. Chattering away about sketches and desserts. Smiling and scribbling exuberant notes on his tablet. And suddenly there's a hard tug behind my ribs, a curious twinge that echoes through my chest and into the rest of my body, taking up residence in my fingertips and the tendons of my ankles and the patchwork parts of my brain. It's an odd, sweet ache, too pleasant to be classified as pain. Bewildered, I lift one hand to my heart, wondering if that organ is malfunctioning as well.

"And anyway," Peeta goes on, drawing my attention back to their conversation, "I don't think Katniss is going to die. She's strong."

Another flash of movement sends me scuttling back across the room, but not before I hear Haymitch say, "Yeah, yeah, I get it. The power and love and all that crap. Just don't say I didn't warn you."

* * *

The table is waist-high and thin as glass, supported by an assemblage of curved metal rods. I stroke the surface with my fingertips and savor the cool slickness of the screen, watching as ripples of blue light appear at my touch. Unlike the one I woke up on, I like this table. And I like this room, I think – or, at least, I could like it under different circumstances. I like the light that emanates from the ceiling, neutral and faint, nothing at all like the glaring brightness I faced in the gray room and on the podium. I like the shimmering puddles of light that spread under my fingers when I rest them on the interactive tabletop, and I like the tests. Part of me resents them, for reasons I try not to think about too much, but there's no denying the swell of pride that rises in me whenever I pass an assessment. And I always pass. Some take me longer to decode than others, but I've been in here for hours and I haven't failed once.

But two little details taint the whole image, ruining my enjoyment of the space: the locked door and the silvery sheet of one-way glass that faces me from the far wall, behind which at least half a dozen scientists analyze my every move. I assume them to be the same group that puzzled over my behavior in the conference room, perhaps minus the two youngest, but I really don't know for sure. Beetee, at least, is definitely there. It's his voice that crackles into the room through a round speaker just underneath the window. Look at this, solve that, beat this, organize these, recite this.

By the time Beetee clicks on the speaker and says, "That's enough for today," the muscles in my thighs and calves stretch and ache with every movement. They didn't give me a chair, or even a stool, to sit on while I solved equations and riddles and anagrams, and now my legs have grown so weary that they prickle with numbness. I brace the heel of one hand on the table as I stretch, wincing, and hope that whatever they have planned for me next involves a seat.

It doesn't.

Beetee guides me down the hall and into the elevator with one hand looped firmly around my elbow, as if he expects me to either lag or run. We descend to level five, where I'm deposited in the largest room I've ever seen. It's more of a hall, really, with a ceiling higher than three men stacked on top of one another and walls so distant they appear shorter than my pinky finger. The open space is at once inviting and intimidating, and I find myself stuck between wanting to sprint gleefully from one end of the massive room to the other and wanting to turn right back around and retreat into the comfortable confines of the elevator. But as I gaze around me, another desire overwhelms both. Again, always, I want to explore.

Blades, poles, weights and weapons gleam in precise rows where they're assembled on racks. Rubbery mats cover the floor in one area, and multicolored concentric circles – _targets –_ run the entire length of the far wall. One corner is marked off with neon tape and floor-to-ceiling sheets of what I assume to be bulletproof glass. The floor and walls within are stained black in starbursts. Here and there, small collections of people cluster around sturdy-looking steel tables, gesturing animatedly. I breathe in deliberately, holding the scents of sweat and metal and rubber in my lungs.

"What –" I begin to ask, but a woody _crack_ draws my attention to the nearest target. A slim hatchet protrudes from the very center of the red circle, the handle trembling slightly. A whoop echoes off the high ceiling as a spiky-haired woman struts forward to retrieve it. "You see that, hot stuff?" she bellows.

"Uh, yeah," someone responds from behind a table several yards away.

"No, you didn't, you were looking at your boring-ass charts," the woman accuses, but she smirks through the words.

"What is this place?" I try again as the woman rips the hatchet out of the wall and stalks away with it.

"Weaponry testing and development department," Beetee answers. He flicks off his glasses to clean them on his coat. "I worked on this level for a few years before I moved on to level six."

"To do what?" I say, jumping at the chance to pry more information from him. When he doesn't answer I guess, "Create combat androids?"

He glances at me sideways, replaces his glasses and pulls out his tablet. I resist the urge to slap it out of his hands as he taps away at the screen. Eventually he says, "That's right. Androids, and later synths."

"Like me?"

For some reason, this makes him smile, but the expression doesn't quite convey happiness. "No, not like you. Other synths don't have organic parts. Technically speaking, you're not a synth any more than you are a human. You're a hybrid."

I struggle to make sense of this information, fitting it into what I already know about the world. At the same time, I try desperately to think of something else to say. Beetee has said more to me in the last thirty seconds than he has in the entirety of the past two days. If he stops talking now I fear he may not tell me anything else for weeks. I end up blurting, "The prep team called me a synth. _You_ called me a synth."

"The prep team doesn't have sufficient clearance to know about Project Mockingjay. As far as they're concerned, you're entirely synthetic. And, frankly, _organic-synthetic-humanoid-hybrid-prototype_ is rather a mouthful. I referred to you as a synth out of convenience, not accuracy." He pauses to watch the brunette woman trade her hatchet for one with a metal handle, and for a moment both of us are silent.

"The synths you made before," I venture. "They were made for the war too?"

"Oh, no. I've been creating and studying synthetics since long before the war even started. A few warrior synths existed before, but battle certainly wasn't the first thing on anyone's mind when creating synthetics. They were made to perform any number of tasks."

"But those warrior synths were inadequate."

Beetee inclines his head. "In many ways, yes. Their structure didn't allow for nearly the strength or accuracy of real combat androids, and they looked and acted too much like machines to be any use in espionage. Plus, they were hackable. They simply could not replace human soldiers." The light reflects off his glasses as he turns, flashing in my peripheral vision. "That's where Project Mockingjay came from. When the war started, the government tasked me with creating a new type of synth. A warrior, but one that could blend in with human society. One that could be a spy as well. One with instinct. And, thus –" he gestures to me – "the mockingjay was created."

"Mockingjays," I correct, thinking of the two failed attempts before me. And then, "You said I'm a prototype. If I pass all your tests, will you make more like me?"

"Of course."

"And what if I fail?"

He regards me quietly for a moment before making a note, turning, and gazing out into the huge room. "Then we hope that the next model will not. Ah, here he is."

The elevator doors have _whoosh_ ed open again, spitting out a somewhat disheveled Peeta. That same funny twinge flits through me, quick and keen as a dagger. I very nearly step towards him before I check myself.

"Being late won't become a habit of yours, will it?" Beetee says mildly, and Peeta offers a sheepish smile.

"Sorry. Just talking to Dr. Everdeen."

"Are you sick? We can't risk exposing the mockingjay to any pathogens, Peeta. You know that."

"I'm not," Peeta assures him. "I just figured she knows more about nurturing than Haymitch." His gaze flickers over me as he says this, catching on my eyes for just a moment before he looks away.

Beetee's brows sink in confusion. "Well, yes, I suppose so." He blinks a few times, then lifts and drops his shoulders in a restless gesture. "Now come – we've wasted too much time talking already."

* * *

I'm greeted, assessed and instructed by a tall, rugged, taciturn man with coloring nearly identical to my own. When he does speak, his voice carries a casual twang, and I identify the dialect as Appalachian. His nametag reads _Hawthorne, Gale._ Peeta calls him Gale. Beetee calls him Mr. Hawthorne. The axe-happy woman, whose name is Johanna, calls him any number of names, not all of which can possibly be considered acceptable in polite company. I'm still working on picking up social cues, but I'm pretty sure that painfully correct woman – Effie, that's her name – would faint hearing some of the stuff that comes out of Johanna's mouth. Her first words to me were, "Who the hell are you?" She's blunt. It's refreshing.

Together, they introduce me to the rest of the weapons team. There are the twin sisters, Leeg 1 and Leeg 2, who are busy arguing bullet aerodynamics and barely spare me a glance. Then, several tables down, there are the tawny, stocky brothers, Castor and Pollux. Castor explains that I shouldn't be offended if Pollux won't talk to me; he lost his hearing years ago due to an accident with an experimental grenade.

One of Pollux's hands swirls over his cheek, then points to his temple. To my surprise, my mind easily translates the gestures into a message: _She's pretty, don't you think?_

Castor bobs one fist – _Yes –_ and I hesitantly lift my own hand to sign, _Thank you._

Pollux seems delighted to have found someone he can talk to besides his brother, and immediately launches into a quick-fire conversation about days of the week – apparently it's Tuesday – and the weather. His face falls almost comically when I tell him I've never seen rain, or clouds for that matter, and I rush to tell him about the sunlight I basked in this morning.

 _That’s good,_ he signs, his expression suddenly serious. _Sunlight is the best cure for a lot of things. You never know how much it means until it's gone._

I tip my head inquisitively, but he doesn't care to elaborate.

It takes at least five minutes and three team members to drag him back to his station, at which point he seems significantly more dejected than before. I wonder what it was I said to make his shoulders droop so much.

"I didn't know you could sign, Katniss," Peeta says, a wisp of awe threading through the words. "I don't think you'll ever cease to surprise me."

I turn away from Castor and Pollux's retreating figures to respond and find myself nearly face-to-face with Peeta. He's standing much closer than I thought he was, and for a moment our breath washes together. His eyes widen, as if he's startled by our closeness, too. Another pang of longing twists in my gut, amplified tenfold now that I'm near enough to make out every freckle and eyelash. I want to arch up on my tiptoes and lean my forehead against his, or even twine my arms around his shoulders.

His eyes slide down my face to linger on my lips, and, unbidden, the definition of a kiss comes to the forefront of my mind. I picture myself pushing up on my toes, or maybe tugging Peeta down to meet me, and fitting my mouth to his. I wonder if he tastes the same way he smells – like cooking spices and clean sheets and charcoal pencils. My lips are already parting, drinking in his scent.

And then I remember what I am, and what I am not, and I drop my gaze and hurry after Beetee. What am I thinking? I can't let myself display my emotions like that. I may as well have waved a bright pink flag yelling, "I'm malfunctioning, come disassemble me!" And anyway, Peeta wouldn't want me kissing him even if there weren't all these people around. Or would he?

 _No,_ I tell myself firmly. _You can't think like that. It's too dangerous._

The last weapons team member I meet is a headstrong woman named Cressida who carries a tablet at all times. One side of her head is shaved, a leaf-green tattoo bringing a splash of color to the bare skin. I reach up to stroke the vines with a finger as soon as she gets close enough, which makes her giggle.

"I'll be the one recording your tests and training," she says, shaking my hand with a smile. "And, speaking of, it's not getting any earlier. Shall we?"

From there it's familiar territory. More tests. More stretching, more motor control assessments, more simple exercises. They have me do push-ups and sit-ups and jackknives and sprints and a whole laundry list of other things that hurt. It's a good hurt, though. It's the kind of hurt that will make me stronger. All through this, Cressida films with her tablet, Gale coaches me and Johanna makes lewd comments from the sidelines. Once, while I'm halfway through a handstand, she yells, "Hey, pretty thing, come sleep in my bed next time," which makes Gale and Peeta simultaneously say, "No, Johanna." I'm still not sure what she meant by it.

Beetee and Peeta have been standing a few feet away to watch, but the others long ago went back to what they were doing before. Their inattention is strangely comforting. I'm so used to being constantly stared at by everyone in the room, constantly talked about, constantly poked and prodded and analyzed. There's still plenty of poking and prodding and analyzing here, but at least I'm clearly not the most important thing in the room.

The weapons team is nice enough, I suppose. Some of them refer to me as "it," but it's obvious they don't do it out of spite or disrespect. They smile at me and say please and thank you, but I can tell they don't think of me as a person so much as a person-shaped _thing_. And I guess, to them, that's exactly what I am.

"Up," Gale says, and I spring to my feet, biting back a groan as my abdominal muscles scream in release. He saved the planks for last, for which I am grateful. I'm not sure I could do anything else just at the moment without folding in on myself. My chest rises and falls in quick, gulping breaths, and my muscles spasm randomly. A fine mist of sweat has collected on my skin. One drop crawls down my throat and into my tank top as Johanna throws a water bottle at my face.

"Doing all right, brainless?" she asks – or maybe taunts, I can't tell – as I catch it and twist open the cap. "Need to go sit down a moment?"

"I have a brain," I tell her. "It's just –"

"Half and half, I know. Maybe I should call you coffee creamer instead." She cackles at her own joke. I don't understand it. But then again, I don't understand most of what she says.

It's at this moment that I feel eyes on me. I swallow my mouthful of water and turn in time to catch Peeta looking at me. This would be nothing new, except his eyes aren't glued to my face as the usually are. He's watching my legs, I think. I don't understand this, either. Before, he's always avoided the sight of my body as best he could. I thought my reinforced flesh repulsed him, but now he's tracing the shape of my legs with his gaze as if I'm nothing short of fascinating to him. When his eyes reach my face, he startles and begins to fumble with his tablet, scribbling avidly.

Now I almost wish there were more tests to be completed, so I could see if it would happen again. The whole exchange leaves me baffled; I wish more than anything to know what's happening in his head.

Before Beetee takes me back to the gray rooms, Gale leads me to the target range. "You'll need to be proficient in at least one of these," he says, pointing me towards the nearest weapons rack. "Go ahead and choose one."

I step forward, eyes flying over the plethora of weapons before me. There are so many I don't know where to look, let alone what to choose. I wander through the weapon racks and trust my brain to tell me the name and purpose of each, and it does. Throwing knives. Bowie knives. Rapiers, falchions, long-swords, short-swords and katanas. Tridents and sickles, hatchets and polearms and grenades. Javelins. Darts.

And guns. So many guns. Pistols, rifles, shotguns, machine guns. Without quite knowing why, I stay far away from these.

And then, just when I think I might not find a single weapon I'm willing to try, I turn around and see it. A bow. A recurve bow, to be exact, set out on a table with its arrows lined up beside it. Something about the delicate curve of the limbs draws me in until I'm close enough to make out every twist in the string, every jagged feather, every scratch along the arrow shafts.

I'm almost afraid to touch them, these instruments of death. Every one of these arrows could easily stop a heart. That is, in fact, what they were made for. And yet, there's a certain beauty to them, too.

 _Just like me,_ something in me whispers.

I reach out and run my fingers along the string. It's taut as a wire and nearly humming with tension, and I know immediately that I want it.

"Oh, no, that's not an option," Gale says, but I'm already picking up the bow. My palm wraps around the grip, and it's as if all that humming tension is shivering up my arm and into my body, lending new power to my wrung-out muscles.

"This one," I decide.

"You can't –"

"This one."

I don't relent, and at last he says, "All right, you know what? Fine. You can borrow it. Once."

He tries to tell me how to stand, how to hold the bow, but I already know. The information is there, already programmed into me, and for once it doesn't feel strange. For once, it feels right. And when the first arrow strikes the center of the target, the impact echoing off the concrete walls, a bone-deep tremor of satisfaction goes through me.

I find Beetee, ignoring the expressions of surprise that surround me, and say, "I want one of these."

* * *

And so it goes for the next week. I wake up, in Peeta's bed more often than not; I eat; I report to the one-way mirror room for several hours of intellectual assessment; I eat again; I descend to level five for military and espionage training, and then I'm trotted away by either Beetee or Effie, who insists I address her as Miss Trinket. Once my time with either one of them is over I choke down one more meal and then I'm done for the day, free to… Well, I'm not free to do much of anything, really. But the evening is when I get to spend time with Peeta, without a one-way glass or a tablet or another scientist between us. Evenings are a time for rest. For sitting cross-legged at the foot of Peeta's bed – the scientists have mostly given up trying to keep me in the gray room at night, especially after I decoded their fancy new electronic lock within minutes – and watching him draw. For peering at his impossibly long lashes in the slanting, orange light of a setting sun. The building is positioned in such a way that I never get to see the sunset itself, but Peeta paints as well with words as he can with pencils and brushes, and I can imagine. I tell myself that this is enough. I tell myself I don't need the whole sunset, as long as I have these little pieces. The drawings, and the light, and Peeta.

Sometimes, if I'm very lucky, he'll drop a kiss on my temple before he goes to exchange his lab coat for sleep-clothes.

On the days when Effie collects me from level five, she takes me into her lavishly decorated office and attempts to teach me how to fit in with society – at least, that's how she sees it. I think that if she wants me to fit in with the uptight, educated elite, she's doing a fine job of it. Otherwise, I'm no better off than I was at the moment of my waking. But, according to Effie, that's none of my concern. After all, I may not know anything about how to interact with ninety-nine percent of society, but at least I know which fork to use and how to arrange a skirt around my knees.

On the days when I'm greeted by Beetee, he escorts me to his personal laboratory at the very heart of level six, where he takes samples of my blood, saliva, skin cells and hair to test them thoroughly for anomalies. As tedious as my afternoons with Effie – excuse me, _Miss Trinket_ – are, I much prefer them over the alternative. Beetee's lab is… unsettling. That's the best way to describe it. I think this is mostly due to the empty, person-sized tube of glass in the far corner. The gestation chamber. The nape of my neck prickles whenever I turn my back to it, as if it was a living thing unto itself, watching me. Assessing me. Whispering to me.

 _You are mine,_ it seems to say as the overhead lights bounce off its polished surface. _You were created here, and one day you must return here._

On the fourth day, I spy a dark lump just beside it, wedged between the glass curve and the wall. I dare to approach after a few minutes of deliberation, ready to leap back if the chamber so much as gurgles. The dark thing, I discover, is a thickly padded roll of fabric and a lumpy pillow, all bundled together with an elastic cord. I poke at it with a toe, wary, but it just falls over with a soft _thwip._

"What's this?" I ask. I have to repeat the question twice more before Beetee looks up from studying skin cells from the inside of my cheek.

"The gestation chamber."

"No, this." I kick the lump.

"Oh, that. It's a sleeping bag. Peeta must have left it here last time he used it."

"Why?"

"He can be forgetful sometimes."

"No, why did he have it in here?"

Beetee straightens, and I can hear his back pop from all the way across the room. "He used to insist on sleeping beside the gestation chamber to keep an eye on your vitals during the night. He was irrationally worried that something would go wrong and no one would be there to stop it. Of course, the alarms would have brought us all in within seconds, but I never could convince him of that…" He trails off, going silent for so long I think he's done speaking, but then he says, "FXFC-5 and LVNA-9 both died between six in the evening and six in the morning. He blamed himself for not being there when it happened, I think, so he wouldn't take any chances the third time around."

Something I can't name thrums through me. Peeta slept here before I was initialized, watching over me. Is it possible that could have been the reason I followed him that first night? Could I have sensed his presence somehow, through the glass, before I even became aware? Could I have retained that vague impression of companionship in some deep corner of my mind? It's impossible, but I desperately want to believe it. It softens the foreboding that emanates from that hateful glass chamber.

Occasionally, Dr. Everdeen or Primrose or both will pop in to give me a routine checkup while Beetee works. My health, according to nearly everyone on the team, is their utmost priority. I test this one day by developing a faux cold, and watch them just about lose their minds over it. It's amusing, but only until I notice the frantic catch in Peeta's voice. Then I gently head-butt his shoulder when no one is looking and whisper, "I'm only teasing. I'm fine, see?" His response is to hug me so hard I think my ribs might fracture if I was human.

"Thank god," he breathes into my hair. Then he pulls back, eyes burning, and slips his hands over my jaw, his long fingers sliding up into my hair. "Never do that again," he whispers fiercely. "Promise me."

I promise him, all the while wondering why something as simple as a cold could scare him so much.

* * *

I know something is different as soon as Peeta comes in with the food tray, knocking the door closed with his hip. There's only one bowl on the tray, and though I can't yet see its contents, the slosh of broth is conspicuously absent.

"Guess what," Peeta says, beaming.

I arch an eyebrow.

"You get real food today!"

I narrow my eyes.

"I know, I know, but just try it. It's worlds better than that slimy crap." He winces, as if expecting Beetee to reprimand him, but the latter has his head buried in day-old notes and doesn't seem to have noticed. "Tell you what, one bite, and if you don't want it I can find something else."

This seems reasonable enough, so I move my elbows off the counter to make room for the tray. Peeta sets it in front of me with a flourish, and I am immediately bathed in a hot, moist cloud of steam. "Oh," I sigh, leaning closer. The smell is amazing. Sweet and warm and creamy. My brain automatically rattles off a list of ingredients based on the aroma – _cinnamon, honey, nutmeg, vanilla, ginger, blueberry…_

"What is this?" I ask, even as I dig a spoon into the bowl. The substance is thick and lumpy, the color a neutral gray-tan, and a ribbon of something amber-gold winds artfully across the surface. A sprinkling of dark blue orbs – _blueberries –_ glistens in the light.

"Oatmeal," Peeta says. He lowers himself onto a stool, shifting a few times to get comfortable. "I – well, I hope you like it."

I already know I will, if the taste is anything like the smell. And even if it tastes horrible, it would be worth it for the aroma alone.

I lift the spoon from the bowl, making sure to catch one of the berries, and transfer it to my mouth. A short moan hums in my chest, and the spoon is back in the bowl before I've even swallowed the first mouthful. It does taste the way it smells, but that's not all. I expected the consistency to be uniform throughout the whole bowl, but I detect three or four different textures even in this one spoonful. Something crunches between my back teeth, leaving a nutty taste behind, and a moment later the berry bursts on my tongue, the hot, tart juice quickly spreading through the rest of my mouth.

"I take it you like it, then," Peeta jokes.

My mouth is full, so I respond with a breathy, "Mmm-hmm."

Soon, the gooey sweetness coats my tongue and teeth in a way that's not entirely pleasant, and I reach for the water cup to wash it away. But something is different here, too. The liquid in the cup isn't water. It's white, as white as the lights above, and opaque. I take a cautious sip. The taste is mild, neither sweet nor plain, but somewhere in-between. Cold and frothy and clean. _Milk,_ my mind supplies as I take another, more enthusiastic sip.

"Try this," Peeta advises. In his hand is a slice of something golden-brown and spongy slathered with a pale paste. I don't hesitate before taking a bite this time. My teeth sink through something impossibly crunchy and soft at the same time, crumbs raining onto my shirt and sticking to my lips. "Toast," Peeta says before my mind can identify it.

I alternate bites of oatmeal with sips of milk, occasionally pausing to nibble on the toast, and Peeta sits grinning at me the whole time. His tablet balances on one thigh, as if he meant to get some work done while I ate, but he hasn't touched it. I pause halfway through a bite and he quickly averts his eyes from my lips. I consider calling him out on it, but there's a more important question on my mind. "Can I have this again tomorrow?"

His grin widens, pressing a dimple into one cheek. "I'll make it for you every day, if you like."

"You made this?"

"Of course."

Content with his answer, I dig back into the oatmeal.

The bowl is only half empty when I feel my stomach clench unhappily, stretched too tight. I don't know what happens when you eat more than you should, but I'd bet it's none too pleasant, so I put down the spoon. But I can't waste this food either. I've heard the weapons team muttering about strict rations and food shortages in other parts of the country. I can't just shake the remainder into a sink or trashcan when I know there are people, hundreds of miles away, who won't eat at all today.

"Here." I push the tray towards Peeta.

"Done?" He goes to pick it up, but I stop him with a touch.

"You finish it. I can't."

He meets my eyes then, a question coded in the way he blinks. At last, he takes the spoon. "Okay."

* * *

I'm in such a good mood from breakfast that I don't particularly mind when Beetee sends Peeta off to work on something else instead of join us on our walk to the one-way mirror room as usual. It's only when we pass the room and head for the elevator instead that I realize something is wrong.

"No intellectual assessments today?" I ask.

"No," Beetee says. And that's all. He doesn't offer an explanation, and his silence sets me on edge. The anxiety buzzing in the back of my skull only worsens when he presses the button for level seven instead of level five.

"No training either?"

"Today's schedule is a little different."

For once, he isn't looking at me. He isn't even tapping any notes into his tablet. He faces straight ahead, hands clasped before him, shoulders tense. The warmth in my belly turns to lead.

Level seven looks almost exactly like level six. Somehow, this is worse than if it was entirely foreign. It's similar, but not quite the same, and it triggers a burst of adrenaline that sends my respiratory and circulatory systems into overdrive. It's almost right but not quite, not the same but very nearly, and everything in me is screaming _trap_.

"Come on," Beetee prompts.

I want to shake my head. I want to dart back into the elevator and choose another floor, any other floor. I want to run.

But I cannot, will not show fear. So I smooth my expression and step out into the hallway. The scent of antiseptic and formaldehyde stings in my nostrils, turning my stomach, and for a while I have to focus very hard on the rhythm of Beetee's shoes on the tiled ground to keep from bolting. Then, abruptly, he halts.

"Go on in," he says, still avoiding looking anywhere near me.

"Aren't you coming to make observations?" I ask.

"I have other work to do," he says vaguely. "I'll look over the reports later."

With nothing else to say, and no other choice, I wrap clammy fingers around the doorknob and, my heart kicking against my ribs, I push it open.

The antiseptic smell is stronger here, and the air cooler and drier. The walls are white. The floor is white. Everything is white. And then a man steps towards me, the unexpected motion making me jump.

"Welcome, KTNS-12," he says with a cursory smile. "I'm Dr. Gloss, and these are my apprentices, Cato and Clove." He waves an arm towards a boy and a girl, both around Peeta's age. The girl regards me with a smirk. The boy stands with his arms crossed and feet apart, very obviously asserting dominance without a single word. The doctor picks up a tablet and flicks through it. His hair is swept back in a puffy wave, a style that contrasts sharply with the hard rectangle of his jaw.

"Well," he says, startling me again, "Sit down."

I already had a hunch what I would find, but knowing doesn't make seeing it any easier. There, in the center of the room, is a flat metal table, identical to the one in the gray room one floor below. However, while the table in the gray room stood alone, this table is surrounded by a cluster of shining instruments on tray tables. Scissors. Scalpels. Gauze. Tweezers. There's C-clamp welded to the floor, and beside it stands an IV hook.

Dr. Gloss strides forward and I can't help it. I flinch. Either he doesn't notice or doesn't care, because he cups one hand around the back of my neck and smiles down at me. "Now, Katniss, don't be nervous. I know this may seem a little scary at first, but it's really nothing to worry about as long as you cooperate."

I swallow past the dry lump that has accumulated in my throat. "What is this?"

"Today we'll be testing your physical endurance and healing rate."

Instinctually, I step back, shaking my head to rid myself of his touch. The girl sniggers. Dr. Gloss sighs and turns away.

"Here's the deal, little lady," he says, preparing something on the counter I can't quite see past his bulk. "We can use all the local anesthesia you want so you don't feel a thing. Or, if you'd rather make this difficult for everyone, we can do without. It's all the same to me. What do you say?"

I could run, but they'd catch me. I could hide, but there's nowhere for me to go.

I can't fight. But what I can do is resist. I can keep my face blank and my eyes cold, and I can stare these people straight in the face while they test my body. I can be strong.

 _I am not afraid,_ I tell myself. _I am not afraid._

Legs shaking, head swimming, I walk to the table.


	3. Pine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, anything you recognize (lines, characters, themes, etc.) belongs to Suzanne Collins. :)

Dr. Gloss didn't lie. I feel no pain at all. I don't even feel the pressure.

"Ten pounds per square inch," the girl, Clove, reports, and Dr. Gloss nods as he taps it into his tablet.

"Okay, give it another quarter turn."

The C-clamp groans as the beefy boy, Cato, eases the crank forward. I make the mistake of glancing at my hand, which is strapped in place at the wrist. The smallest finger is pinched between the two steel plates of the clamp, the flesh inflamed. I thought my skin would turn red, but instead it's white. White as bone. White as the room around me.

I look away.

"Fifteen pounds per square inch."

"You're doing very well," Dr. Gloss says to me. I stare back at him blankly.

_I am not afraid._

"Twenty pounds per square inch."

"Keep it slow."

Something hot trickles down my arm and drips off my elbow. The skin has split.

But I am not afraid. I'm not.

"Twenty five."

"Clove, make sure you're recording. We need accurate data or we have to do this all over again."

"I am," the girl growls, readjusting her tablet. The screen twinkles with white-blue script which scrolls across the borders in threads, framing the live recording of my hand. Vital signs, time elapsed, clamp pressure. My heart rate is far too elevated. I slow my breathing to counteract it. I am not afraid. I am incapable of experiencing fear.

The clamp slips, just a hair, and for the first time I feel something. It's barely more than a whisper of sensation, slithering up the bones of my hand and extending into my arm. Not pressure or pain or temperature or anything I'm familiar with. It's a sensation like dark is a color – there isn't really anything there, but it's far too _real_ to be nothing.

"Thirty."

"Most human finger bones can fracture at as little as twenty five pounds per square inch," Dr. Gloss says to me, genially. "From here on out it's anyone's guess when yours will break."

Defiance spikes within me. I hold his gaze, staring into the gunmetal blue of his eyes, refusing to admit defeat. That very human part of me is whispering that he wants me to back down, and I will not give him that pleasure. He wants to see me submit or show fear or –

Show fear. He wants me to show fear.

_He knows._

Dread cuts through me. I can see it in his eyes, the way he watches me – he knows I've been malfunctioning, he knows I _feel_ –

Hide it. Push it down, breathe smoothly, keep your eyes blank – don't think, don't feel – I am incapable of experiencing fear – my body is performing optimally, I am experiencing no malfunctions, I do not feel –

Cato speaks up and the doctor looks away. "I bet forty five pounds,"

"Fifty," Clove contests. "No, fifty five."

"How much?"

"How much you got?"

"Focus," Gloss barks, and they both fall silent with a glare.

It's getting harder to breathe, though I'm devoting all my energy to it. I can't quite remember how to draw air into my lungs, and every breath is more stilted than the last. The not-quite-sensation is swelling in my hand, straining in the tendons and prickling at the very edges of my consciousness. It's a kind of _shifting,_ I realize – an infinitesimal grinding of flesh on bone, and _he knows,_ oh, god, he _knows –_

"Forty pounds per square inch."

My throat is tightening, a sick pressure building at the crown of my esophagus, pulling my tongue to the back of my mouth. My organs feel as if they're being stirred with a fork. Clove continues to call out numbers, but the words have lost meaning to me. It's just background noise to the slight squeak of the clamp's crank.

And then a dull crunch and a _wrongness_ in my hand, no pain, but something is _wrong –_ everything inside me constricts, squirms, jerks –

"Stop the clock. Clove, final pressure reading?"

"Fifty seven point two pounds of pressure per square inch."

My head whips to the side, my abdomen clenches and my stomach convulses. Liquid rises in my body, lurching up my throat in a thick gurgle and splattering wetly onto the floor. A rope of saliva swings from my lower lip, viscous and pungent.

Clove's shrieks and Cato's sneers engulf me. My forehead comes to rest against the table's cool surface. Gloss knew I was malfunctioning. He knew, or at least suspected, and he knows for sure now. Whatever I just did – _vomit,_ the calm, logical part of me pipes up, _to eject the contents of the stomach through the mouth; regurgitate; throw up_ – surely alerted him beyond any shadow of a doubt. Shame heats behind my eyes even as Gloss sends Clove away to fetch a medic and Cato to fetch a mop. Eight days into my existence and I ruin it, all because I couldn't keep down the contents of my stomach.

A sudden release of pressure, the grinding of shifting bone, and the clamp is gone. Gloss swipes a square of gauze over the slabs of metal, sponging up the rivulets of my blood in two efficient strokes. He then goes about covering the array of surgical instruments, clapping lids over some trays and tucking others away into cupboards. The room is significantly emptier by the time Clove comes shuffling back in with her shirt pulled up over her nose. Primrose trails behind her. Without thinking, I pull my left hand onto my stomach, covering the split and bruised skin with the healthy, unmarked flesh of my right one.

Primrose takes in the scene at a glance and, skirting the puddle of vomit, strides to the table.

"What happened?" she says as she clicks open her medical aid kit and deftly outfits herself in gloves and a mask.

"I would have thought that was obvious," Gloss drawls, earning himself a stern look from the junior medic.  "Where's your mother? Isn't she supposed to be overseeing the health of this project?"

"She's in the middle of a procedure right now. Shattered kneecap down on level three. Rinse your mouth out," she adds, offering me a small water bottle. I have to lift my right hand to take it, and her eyes go immediately to my left pinky. "Oh, my – how did this happen?"

She's coaxing my hand off my stomach, examining the oozing purple flesh with concern and confusion written all over her face. But doesn't she know? She seems to be privy to all other aspects of Project Mockingjay. Why not this one?

"Is it from training?" she persists when I'm not forthcoming.

No, she doesn't know. And I don't think I want her to. "Yes. I – landed a punch wrong."

The doctor's eyes flicker to my face, but I pretend not to notice.

"Must have been one heckuva punch. What were you hitting, a concrete wall?" Thankfully, she doesn't seem to expect an answer to this, instead going on to ask, "How much does it hurt, on a scale of one to ten?"

"Zero."

She winces. "Jesus. I'm sorry. But I meant one as the lowest, ten as the highest. Should have specified. My bad."

"I know. I mean zero."

 "I already administered local anesthetic," Gloss says smoothly. "I was about to put a splint on it when –" He gestures to the floor just as the door opens again and Cato comes sulking into the room with a bucket and mop.

Primrose frowns and pulls out her tablet. "Her file says she had a bad reaction to sedatives on her first day, too. Could be her body just doesn't react well to anesthetics in general. Or it could have been the food." She looks to me. "I heard you were upgraded to oatmeal this morning, right?"

I nod. There's a tiny spark fizzling in my chest, telling me that maybe, just maybe this isn't the end. Maybe, if I play my cards right…

"That's probably it, then. If anesthetics make her sick anyway, add that to a heavy breakfast and you can't expect it _not_ to come back up." She taps a note into her tablet and presses the icon that will, as I've learned, send it out to all the members of the project. "I'll suggest they put her back on a gel diet for a few days. That should help."

Dr. Gloss nods, accepting this explanation.

The briefest flash of regret goes through me – no more real food, for _days_ – before relief takes over. Primrose may not know it, but she just saved me. Gave me an excuse. A plausible explanation for my malfunction. It was the food that did it, not an emotional response. Of course not. I wasn't designed to experience emotions. Not even fear.

While Gloss x-rays my finger with his tablet, documenting the extent of the damage, Primrose runs through a basic check-up with me. If I focus on her questions – "Does it hurt if I press here? Or here? Can you touch your chin to your chest?" – I can almost ignore him as he applies a small splint to the finger, securing it tightly.

Primrose falls silent for a little while, flashing a pen light in my eyes and peering down my throat. She begins to make a soft humming noise, as if she's about to say something, and I refocus my attention on her. But she doesn't say anything. She just keeps humming, resting on the note the way an arrow rests on a bowstring. Light, primed, trembling. She takes a small breath through parted lips and begins again, this time on another pitch. And then another. And I'm just wondering what she's doing when I realize: the tones aren't separate. They aren't just individual notes, one after the other, but parts intended to make up a whole. And the whole is exquisite. _Music,_ my mind says. _Singing._ It's beautiful. Mathematical in structure, yet organic and unrestrained. I go absolutely still, determined not to miss a single note. The melody Prim weaves is forlorn, wandering – now high and clear, now warm and low, and always with an edge of melancholy. Every part of me aches to react, to sway with the notes or let the muscles of my face relax or even join in with my own voice, but I'm still very much aware of Dr. Gloss's presence. I can't let anything show. I can only absorb and crave.

"Why was she sent to you, doctor?" Primrose says abruptly, cutting off the song in the middle of a note and jarring me out of my trance.

The sudden absence of the song burns like a breath held too long. I delve into my mental cache of information, yearning for more, but there's nothing. Just a few related definitions and some cursory notes on genres and basic composition. I don't care about quarter notes and minor seconds, I just want more melodies. But I don't have any.

Gloss arches one eyebrow. "The finger."

"But why not call me or my mother first?"

"You said it yourself. Dr. Everdeen is busy."

"But you didn't know that until I told you." She seals her medical bag and snaps off her gloves, regarding the doctor coolly over her mask. He stands over her by more than a foot, but she stares up at him as boldly as if she was the more powerful one. "So I'll ask again: why was Katniss taken to you to treat her injury, instead of me?"

Gloss smiles and tries to rest a hand on her shoulder, but she steps away. "Look, darling, don't get your feathers ruffled. KTNS-12 needed medical assistance and I just happened to be available. I admire your spirit, but this isn't a competition. You'll get plenty of chances to practice, don't you worry."

Primrose's eyes narrow slightly. "Coin may have given you clearance, but you are not part of the team. Don't forget that." She turns to stare down Cato and Clove, who have paused to eavesdrop. "And neither are you. Don't think I don't see you over there."

"Tut, tut, Miss Everdeen. I never took you for one to disrespect an elder."

Primrose looks back to Dr. Gloss, pulls the mask off her face and gives him a cheery smile. "Whatever are you talking about?" Then she turns, flicking one golden braid over her shoulder, and walks to the door. "Coming, Katniss?"

Gloss nods to me and I stand. "Try not to move or jostle it too much," he says. "We'll take a look at it again tomorrow."

Primrose glances at him again, clearly vexed, and gestures for me to follow her out the door. The desire to run rushes through me as soon as the escape route becomes clear, but I restrain myself. I walk to the door steadily, with movements that suggest no great hurry. And then, just as I'm about to cross the threshold, I turn. I probably shouldn't, but I can't resist this one small, personal victory.

"Thank you," I say, "For your consideration."

I catch a flash of surprise on his face, and then the door closes between us and I'm free. Again I want to run, and again I restrain myself. _Not in front of Primrose._

We walk down the white hall side by side, silent until she reaches out to summon the elevator. Then, once we're both encased in the humming box, she speaks up.

"Coin knows a lot about politics and not a lot about psychology." In the warped reflection of the polished doors, she rolls her eyes. "She doesn't even know the correct definition of negative reinforcement, for god's sake. Why she's allowed so much influence on the project is beyond me."

I look at her sideways. I checked the elevator for bugs and hidden cameras days ago, but just because I didn't find any doesn't mean they aren't there. "Do you really think it's a good idea to talk like that?"

She shrugs. "I'm just an apprentice. What are they going to do, ground me? Point is, I don't care if she picked out Dr. Gloss personally; I don't trust him." Then she turns, and looks up at me with clear, blue eyes. She looks so young, so fragile, that it's hard for me to remember that she is technically much older than me. "Do you?"

I stare back, mulling over the words I could say, but probably shouldn't. At last, as the doors open onto level six, I give a single shake of my head.

She accepts my response with a blink, and then turns away. "Getting off?"

"No."

She steps into the hall.

"Take care of your finger, then. And keep us updated if you get sick again!"

The doors close.

Primrose's song floats through my mind, looping and repeating endlessly. Now that she's gone, I can stop hiding my shaking hands behind my back. The fear is returning in creeping tendrils, tightening once more around my chest. The tang of antiseptic clings to me, as if it seeped into my hair and clothes and mind during the time I spent on level seven. I can't let anyone see me like this. Not the weapons team. Not Effie. Certainly not Beetee. Not now. I don't even know where I'm supposed to go after this. Beetee didn't bother to tell me before he handed me off to Gloss.

I hit the button for level twelve. My jaw aches with tension. Primrose may have been oblivious, but Beetee was certainly aware of Gloss's purpose. Was Peeta? Did he let Beetee lead me away to level seven, knowing what would happen there? I know, somewhere in the calculating part of my mind, that his hands were likely tied, but the other half of me doesn't care. Why didn't he help me? Why didn't he even try?

I run the rest of the way to Peeta's room as soon as the elevator doors open, unable to keep my legs in check anymore. I'm breathing hard again within seconds. Now that no one is around to witness it, I can allow myself the luxury of unbridled fear. He's still there, somewhere, levels below me – Gloss. He's there and he's waiting for me to break. I feel his presence like cold fingers on my neck, like if I turned around he'd be there, watching silently from the end of the hallway, and it spurs me on. He's there, he's waiting, he's _watching._ My lungs burn. Animal instincts are surging through me, urging me towards _nest-mate-comfort._

The door rebounds off the wall with a loud bang and I tumble into the room, flushed, nerves twanging.

"Well, hello to you too."

I'm leaping away before I even consciously register the sound. My arms draw up in a defensive stance. I'm ready to run and fight and –

It's just Peeta. Slouching over his desk, surprise tugging his brows up into his messy bangs.

"Are you okay?"

He stands. I remain where I am against the wall.

_Do you know? Do you know what they want to do to me? What they already did to me?_

He takes in my disheveled appearance and his eyebrows drop again, pushing down into a slight frown. "Done with training already?" Then he sees it. "Oh, m– Katniss – Katniss, your _hand_ –"

He's across the room in three quick strides, and then his own hands are fluttering over mine without ever touching, quick and agitated as the lights of Gale's holographs, and all at once my wariness is gone. Peeta doesn't know, any more than Primrose does. He doesn't know anything. I should have realized that from the moment Beetee sent him away this morning.

"What happened?" he pleads, finally cupping the uninjured side of my hand with the lightest touch.

 _It would just upset him,_ I reason to myself even as my insides give an uncomfortable twist. _If watching Coin hit me made him angry, who knows what would happen if he knew about this. It's better if I don't tell him._

Still, some small nubbin in the instinctual part of my mind maintains that this is bad. That I need to tell him now, here, before it gets worse. That nothing good can come of keeping secrets.

"Landed a punch wrong," I say.

He accepts this without question, wincing and groaning about how bad he feels that he wasn't there when it happened. The twist in my gut tightens.

Peeta insists on messaging Beetee and telling him that I'm taking the rest of the day off, even though I'm perfectly fit to complete the rest of the day's scheduled activities. When I try to tell him so he refuses adamantly.

"I'm not letting you do any work when you're hurt," he repeats, talking over my protests.

"It's a fractured phalanx, not a shattered femur," I say at last. "And even if it was, aren't I supposed to be able to function adequately in almost any physical condition? Isn't that the point? If I was in the field –"

"But you're not," he snaps, more sharply than I've ever heard him speak to me, and I fall silent. Immediately, he flinches, one hand rubbing over his face. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It's just – you don't – you shouldn't disregard your own health so easily. It's important. It may seem like such a little thing, but little things can make a big difference."

I stare up at him, puzzling over the beseeching set of his eyes. For some reason, the cold glint of the gestation chamber flashes through my mind.

His palms go to rub up and down my arms, warmth trailing in their wake. "Just humor me and rest today, okay?"

I hesitate, and then – "Okay," I relent. It's clear I've upset him, despite my best efforts not to. The least I can do is allow him to fuss over me. And anyway, I'm not sure I could put on my façade again quite so soon. Maybe it is better if I take a day off, away from prying eyes.

That's when I feel the first slow throb of pain. It aches from the inside out and stretches in a way that's unpleasantly tender. My right hand closes around the little splint, squeezing, instinctually aware that pressure overrides pain, but it only makes it worse. I try to hide it, to pass it off as a casual gesture, but Peeta's eyes are already crinkled in concern.

"Painkillers wearing off?"

I give a short nod. And then, because I need to steer the conversation in a less dangerous direction and because it's been bothering me since Primrose left, "They put me back on a gel diet."

He gives a sympathetic grimace, but his attention hasn't left my hand. "Why?"

Then, of course, I have to explain about throwing up, and I have to substitute Primrose's explanation for the real one. That I had a bad reaction to strong anesthetics. That, coupled with my first real meal, it was too much for my young stomach to handle. Peeta apologizes profusely, claiming all responsibility for "jumping the gun with breakfast." The twist in my gut develops into a hard knot. Every other moment I consider telling him, but – no, no. It would only make things worse. And anyway, the Physical Endurance and Healing Assessment isn't the problem. It's me. I was too weak, and I almost gave myself away because of it.

Within minutes, Peeta has me settled on the bed with an ice pack, a tiny bowl of broth and some papery squares of dehydrated bread to dip in it – Peeta calls them "saltine crackers." He even smuggles in some low-level painkillers in his pocket. The pills are hard and shiny and lilac-purple, glistening in the light, and he assures me they're far too weak to further upset my stomach.

"You could give these to a toddler, if they weren't a choking hazard," he says, dropping two into my palm. "Trust me."

I swallow the pills. And it helps, after a little while. Or maybe it's the numbing chill of the ice pack. Either way, by the time Peeta picks up his tablet, the twinges of pain are nearly forgotten.

"Want to watch something?" he asks from the other side of the bed. The bluish light of the tablet highlights the contours of his face from below and throws strange shadows across his skin.

"Watch?" I repeat through a mouthful of rough, salty cracker crumbs. They melt on my tongue within moments. Salt becomes sweetness.

"Yeah. Like a show, or a movie."

The definitions flash through my mind, but they don't help me much as far as understanding. Narratives told through the medium of a screen and viewed for recreational purposes? I can't quite grasp the point. But I'm getting the impression that it's an activity traditionally done while sitting still, and sitting still sounds very good right now. So I nod.

Peeta scoots towards the head of the bed, fitting himself between me and the wall, and props the tablet up on his knees. The tablet dances with light for a moment, loading, and then a dizzying selection of films materializes on the screen. Peeta flips through the titles while I watch. Occasionally he'll pause to read a summary. Eventually, while I'm still overwhelmed by the sheer variety, he settles on one he calls "a real classic."

"It's kind of slow-paced," he says, tapping the icon that will start it, "and the effects aren't amazing, but I think you'll like it. Plus, the soundtrack is genius."

We watch with the lights off and the curtains drawn, and the semi-darkness makes me bold enough to press my body to his when he returns to the bed. Shoulder-to-shoulder, side-to-side, hip-to-hip. I feel his curious stare on my cheek, but my eyes are on the tablet, and after a moment he shifts his weight to lean into me in turn. It's this – the steady warmth of his side, the predictable rise and fall of his chest, the smell of him – that finally washes away the last of my adrenaline. I even consider sleeping.

But then the movie starts. And, just like with Primrose's song, I am entranced.

It's like Peeta's sketches, and nothing like. These images move and speak and interact, as if the tablet balanced between our laps is a little window into another room, or another world. I forget to drink my broth as I watch. It's hard, at first, to piece together the bits of sound and motion into a narrative, and the faint music in the background is distracting – _more music,_ I rejoice, drinking it in – but my mind adjusts quickly. Soon I'm almost more aware of the characters on the screen and their struggles than I am of my surroundings. Almost. It's impossible to completely tune out the way Peeta and I settle against one another, becoming comfortably intertwined as the tablet flickers with light.

Peeta responds to the film frequently, though he's clearly seen it before. He chuckles at the funny moments and winces when a character is harmed. He's clearly invested in this story; maybe it means something more to him than an entertaining tale. Maybe he associates it with a good memory. I know I will, now.

And then, just as two of the characters begin to pool their knowledge to solve an ongoing mystery, I begin to wonder what those memories could be. Unlike me, Peeta has a past. A life before gray walls and strict schedules. It's even possible that he was born and raised outside of this building, somewhere in those vague areas of _not-here_ , out in the sunlight and the crisp air. The concept is startling. My head is full to bursting with information about the world, and now and again I'll overhear some mention of faraway places, but it's never been real for me. Even the movie, which occasionally shows a glimpse of an outdoors location, doesn't feel real. The sky behind the characters' heads is a concept, flat and insubstantial as the tablet screen. Like the pre-stocked information in my mind, I can't connect the things I see on the screen to an actual experience. Reality is well-defined, geometric spaces. Rooms and hallways. Floors below, ceilings above and walls around, and the occasional window to give the barest impression of _outside_. Trying to imagine a life beyond the walls is like trying to imagine a color that human eyes can't perceive. I know it must exist, but my mind can't quite fathom it, strain though I might.

"You okay?" Peeta says, nudging me. "You look far away."

I nod. Onscreen, the characters continue to move, but I'm no longer connected to their actions. "I was thinking."

"About what?"

"Outside. I was trying to imagine it."

He's silent for such a long time that I think he's gone back to watching the movie. Then I feel an irregular breath shudder in his ribcage and his arm tightens around me, drawing me snugly against his side.

"I'll show you," he says. His voice comes out thick, and the way my head is tucked against his throat prevents me from checking which expression is on his face. Have I upset him again, already? "Someday," he adds softly. "I promise."

I can't help it. I squirm out from under his chin, driven by that same odd, sweet ache that took up residence in my chest after the first Project Mockingjay meeting. Now, just as then, it echoes through all the patchwork parts of my body, thrumming with my pulse. It urges me forward. My torso twists, and my face lifts until my lips bump clumsily against Peeta's cheek. He stiffens, and I tense in response, wondering belatedly if I've crossed some boundary. If I've made a mistake. If he'll gently disentangle himself from me and tell me "no." But then a timid smile lifts his lips, and he bows his head to drop an answering kiss on my temple. I feel warmth and a whisper of damp breath on my skin, stirring the loose hairs nearby. The ache in my chest redoubles.

* * *

 I visit Dr. Gloss every day. He keeps track of my rate of healing, which is, apparently, nothing short of remarkable. They take the splint off my finger after five days, and within another two I can't tell that it was ever broken. And in the meantime, they make new injuries. An incision exactly one centimeter deep here, a first degree burn there, a minor puncture wound there.

It becomes part of my routine – though, I notice, not part of my official schedule. Intellectual assessments. Training. Lessons and health examinations, either with Beetee or Effie. Physical Endurance and Healing Assessments with Gloss. And then free time and sleep. But my sessions with Dr. Gloss are always listed as "physical therapy" on the schedule they have on their tablets. Beetee rescheduled it for the end of the day so my injuries can heal overnight. Most of them vanish by the time I wake up, leaving only a yellowish bruise or a smear of dried blood under a bandage.

I get better at hiding them. They're small, for now, so it's usually easy. After that first time, which garnered so much unwanted attention, they learn to avoid my hands, arms and face, focusing instead on my torso. My lower back. My upper thigh. Places my clothing will cover. And for the most part, it works. I get a few worried stares from Dr. Everdeen and more than a few eyebrow lifts from Johanna, but they leave me alone about it. Apparently they don't consider it significant enough to warrant any real suspicion.

Seneca Crane, on the other hand, raises more than a few hackles. He visits weekly, always impeccably dressed and never short of assumptions. He seems to be of the opinion that he knows how to run the project better than the scientists who have been in it from the start, and he takes every opportunity to try to prove it. Even Effie turns her nose up at him. "That man is _meddlesome_ , I say," she huffs one afternoon, needlessly touching up her plum-colored eye shadow. "Simply _meddlesome!_ I swear, every time he turns around he has some other suggestion."

I nod shortly to agree with her, but she doesn't know the half of it. She hasn't seen the predatory way Seneca's gaze lingers on me. The way he lurks at my shoulder, smirking as he makes "observations" on his tablet. It's fancier than any other tablet I've seen, with a protective black case and some sort of inscription on the back. His notes are in code. I guess he doesn't know how easily I can read codes, because he doesn't bother hiding the screen from me when he takes down detailed observations about my legs and breasts.

Once, just as he's about to leave, his hand finds my shoulder. "You're coming along nicely, my dear," he says with a too-wide smile. "You should count yourself lucky. Not many projects catch my employer's attention. Keep up the good work and you may just get to meet him yourself." I don't respond, and something about my silence amuses him. He chuckles, thumps me twice on the back, and then he's out the door and I'm left with a cold pit in my stomach that doesn't dissolve for hours.

* * *

 It's an apology. At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with. I know for certain now that Beetee is fully aware of the truth about Dr. Gloss and his "physical therapy sessions," because every time the painkillers wear off too soon and I wince or halt in the middle of a movement, Beetee frowns and spends several minutes avoiding my gaze.

I don't blame him – not really. He has higher-ups to answer to, just like I do. People who determine his fate the same way he determines mine. It wasn't him who decided the project would benefit from testing my body's healing capabilities. But I think he feels responsible for my pain, when he remembers to notice it.

Thus, the gift.

He came striding out of the elevator in the middle of my late-morning training session with the weapons team. Johanna had been critiquing my knife-throwing technique, and none too gently.

"More shoulder, more shoulder," she kept chanting, with increasing frustration. "A little wrist is great, but you're too stiff. You're going to give yourself – _that one didn't even hit the target!_ What is wrong with you today, brainless?"

I clamped my jaw shut, resisting the urge to snarl at her. My form was fine. Or, it would have been, if Cato and Clove hadn't spent the previous evening sinking needles into my shoulder and injecting micro amounts of poison beneath my skin. I wasn't misunderstanding her directions; it just hurt too much to properly follow them. But I couldn't tell Johanna that, so I just rattled off my usual bland apology and picked up another knife.

It was then that I caught sight of Beetee.

It isn't unusual for him to stop by and observe me while I train, but he's never brought anything with him except his tablet before. Today, as he approached me and Johanna with a nod of greeting, he balanced a tall, black, rectangular case over his shoulder. I tensed before I noticed Peeta walking next to him, grinning in that boyish way of his. If Peeta was there, and smiling, it was unlikely to be anything bad. I relaxed again.

"What's that?" Johanna said as soon as they reached us.

Beetee just quirked an eyebrow and tilted the box towards me. "For you."

And now, as I kneel on the floor and flick open the latches of the case, I think, _It must be an apology._ Otherwise, Beetee would never have wasted so much effort for an emotionless _thing_ like me.

It's a bow. Slim, black and beautiful. Curved elegantly in a manner that I think is meant to evoke the wingspan of a bird. Expertly balanced. I can't help but emit a quiet, "Oh," of admiration upon picking it up. It shimmers softly in the light, faint ripples of silver flashing across the dark surface.

There are a few bows in the weapons center already, of course – the ones I practiced with before, when Gale was in a good enough mood to lend them to me – but none like this.

And there's something else. I have to hold very still to make sure I'm not imagining it. The bow is alive in my hands. I press it against my cheek and feel the slight hum travel though the bones of my face.

"What's it doing?" I ask.

"Saying hello," Beetee says. "It heard your voice."

"It recognizes my voice?"

" _Only_ your voice." He watches me stroke the limbs. I might be seeing things, but his eyes don't seem quite as calculating as usual. The set of his face is pensive, almost… pitying. It's so different from his usual expression that I'm a bit unsettled. "Want to try it out?"

I do.

They line up behind me to watch me shoot. Beetee's tablet is back out, and the assessing glint is back in his eye, and I begin to doubt myself. Maybe there wasn't anything different about him at all. Maybe this isn't a present for my benefit, but just another way to test me. Observe me in action. Either way, I don't mind much. I'll accept it as a gift, I decide, whether it's meant to be or not. It's mine. I've never had anything of my own before, except my clothes, and even those aren't really mine. They were another's before me, and when I no longer have need of them, they'll be passed on. Things like me are too expensive to waste money on things like new clothing.

I empty my quiver into the target – the matching quiver that came in the case, all sleek and black and heavy between my shoulder blades – before finally lowering the bow. I didn't bother with a glove, eager as I was to feel the thrumming tension of my new weapon against my flesh, and the string has bitten a stinging groove into my fingertips. The sensation sends a bone-deep shudder of satisfaction through me. For once, my pain stemmed from _my_ actions, and only my actions. I flick my thumbnail over the groove and relish in the ache. This pain is as much my own as the bow is, and the control it gives me, though minimal, is dizzying.

 _My bow,_ I think. My fingers tighten around the grip, which is contoured smoothly to the lines of my palm. _Mine._ It feels good to own something. I wonder if Peeta feels the same way about me. I am his, after all. In a sense.

I think I'm done, after that, but Beetee surprises me yet again by leading me over to the corner of the weapons center. The corner that's peppered with black starbursts and sealed off from the rest of the giant room by thick, bulletproof glass. The place where they test grenades and other small explosives. The weapons team, as it turns out, has been busy. While most of my arrows are not much more than sharp and pointy, a handful of them are different. Set aside for me on a table are a dozen arrows – six incendiary, six explosive. They fill the cube with ruddy flames and dark plumes of smoke, and I've never felt such power.

I'm hot-cheeked and panting by the time I let the last arrow fly in a bright streak of sparks. Pollux gives me an enthusiastic round of applause, the noise echoing in our little protective booth – somehow, over the past few minutes, I've attracted an audience – and I have to focus hard to keep my expression cool. The urge to smile is so overwhelming I resort to pretending to wipe something off the tip of my nose to hide it. Then I push my protective headphones down around my neck, step back from the firing platform and whisper, "Goodnight." My bow goes still, and then they pry it gently from my grasp and set it back in its case. Of course. Can't have me just carrying around a thing like that. Who knows what I could do. No matter that the bow on its own is almost completely incapable of doing any real damage.

"Do you like it?" Beetee says.

I stop and stare at him for a moment, suspecting some sort of trick, before responding with, "It will suit my needs well."

He's never asked me if I _liked_ something before. In fact, I don't think he's ever asked me about my opinion on anything before. Why start now?

"Well, let's hope the same can be said of the rest of your gear," a voice says from a few yards behind us.

I turn, and approaching us is someone I've never seen before. I go on the defense automatically – after all, the last new people I met were Gloss and his apprentices – but the man's demeanor is mild and completely nonthreatening, and stays that way as he introduces himself.

"My name is Cinna," he says to me. "I'm your stylist."

I accept his handshake, unafraid but perplexed. I'm having trouble categorizing him. His skin is a tad darker than Beetee's and mine, and his hair is thick and tightly curled. Piercings line his ears and brows, and a thin line of gold sweeps over each eyelid. No lab coat, so not a scientist; too old to be an apprentice; not as professionally dressed as a government representative, and not nearly as flamboyant as my prep team or the other building workers I've come to recognize as civilians.

"Stylist?" I echo, even as my mind supplies the definition.

"I've been working on a combat suit for you." He takes a breath like he's about to say more, but words spill from my mouth before he can go on.

"Combat? I'll be in combat? They're sending me into combat? Out –" I gesture vaguely, frustrated at my inability to give voice to what I mean. "Out there? Somewhere else? In the warzone?"

My heart rate has skyrocketed in the last ten seconds. First the bow – and now armor – could it be possible? Could Coin be so eager to move the project forward that they'll send me into battle to test me? Could I leave? Could I get out of this building, beyond all these gray walls, and into the world? The sunlight, blue-gray sky, green-growth smell, earth –

But they're all shaking their heads. Rushing to assure me that, no, that's not the plan at all. Johanna, who has been lingering nearby, even gives a hearty guffaw. Disappointment slides down the back of my throat.

"It's more of a prototype than anything else," Cinna says, in a tone that I'm sure is meant to be reassuring. "It's been in the works for years, but we've only just had a chance to put the whole thing together. We needed your measurements before we could finalize it."

I hold out my arms obediently, but I have to repress a pout. Spending half an hour or more being measured yet again isn't really an ideal way to spend the afternoon, but it's not the worst. At least I'm here, and not on level seven.

Cinna chuckles. "No – you misunderstand. We've had your measurements since the day you were initialized. Today we see if the suit fits."

Together, Cinna, Beetee, Peeta and I board the elevator and begin the descent to level four. I've never been below level five before. The newness at once excites me and sets me on edge, and while my exterior appearance remains cold and unconcerned, my insides are a mess of buzzing, twisting nerves.

Level four is different from any other level I've seen – so different I almost forget to listen to Cinna as he leads us down the hallways. It's gray, like every other level, but the similarities end there. The walls are plastered with colorful schematics, reminders and seemingly random quotes about motivation and inspiration from people whose names I don't recognize. The space is neither a hallway lined with doors and curtained windows, like level 6, nor a vast, echoing room, like level five, but a combination of the two. It's bright and open, with people clustered around doors and tables. The atmosphere is, dare I say, cheerful. The workers here are casually dressed, frazzled but not grim, their fingers wrapped around cups of something that smells like what Effie often drinks. _Coffee,_ I think she called it once. It's a deep, rich aroma, and it makes my mouth flood with saliva. I've always wanted to try it, but no one ever lets me. They don't know what effect it could have on my cardiovascular system.

We pass a trio of unusually brightly-colored people before turning a corner. They don't so much as glance up at us, but I recognize them. It's the prep team I met on my first day.

"Your suit is designed to keep you safe, first and foremost," Cinna is saying as he opens a door with his name on the plaque. "It's heavily reinforced at your weak points, but it should still allow you a full range of motion. It will cover your seams, too. Help you appear more – human."       He hesitates the slightest bit before the last word, his eyes flickering back as if in apology. But I'm more concerned about another one of his words.

"Seams?"

He reaches up and traces his own cheek, indicating where one of my silver markings is.

"Abnormalities in the epidermal layer due to a slight irregularity in the fusing process," Beetee supplies. "LVNA-9 had them too."

"And FXFC-5?"

Peeta flinches and Beetee removes his glasses to rub them uncomfortably on the corner of his shirt. "FXFC-5's systems failed before the organic and synthetic parts of its body could properly fuse. The organic tissue rejected the synthetic tissue before it reached the stage where seams could develop."

I nod shortly and allow Cinna to guide me into the room. The information has triggered an emotional response within me, and not one I immediately recognize. It's akin to pity, but slower. Duller. A blunt blade between my ribs as opposed to a keen one. My mind identifies it as sadness.

"Anyway," Cinna says, "I heard you like archery."

I nod, eyes on the ground.

"I tried to allow for that in the design of your suit, as well. There's a forearm guard built into the sleeve, and a slide-mount for your quiver on the backplate so you don't need to worry about a strap getting in the way of things."

I remember Effie's lessons, and look up at him. "Thank you."

I mean it. I am grateful. Grateful, and simply amazed by the amount of effort that he went to. The bow and arrows were already so much, and now this armor – and specifically tailored for archery besides! But I'm not as happy about it as I think I should be. I can't seem to move past my disappointment from earlier. It's like when I felt the warm stream of air from the hallway, that first day, only to have the door swing shut again and lock me in a room that felt twice as cold as before it opened. I never expected them to let me out, let me fight – never so much as considered it – but in that single moment, I truly believed I had freedom within my grasp. And now, I feel as though I've lost something, though I never had it in the first place. It's a startlingly hollow feeling, as if my heart and lungs have suddenly dropped from my ribcage, leaving a cold, sucking cavity in their place.

Cinna has me stand on a low pedestal, where three angled mirrors throw my image back at me. I haven't seen my whole self in a reflection before, just my head and shoulders, and I watch myself while he goes to fetch my suit. My eyes first find the silvery seams that lace across my left cheek, right shoulder, and right thigh. My clothing covers my torso, but I know there are more on my ribs and left hip. There's a very faint sheen to them, and they stand out against the dark olive of the rest of my skin. Somehow, knowing what they are and how they came to be sends a ripple of cold resentment through me. The feeling is disconcerting. I've never disliked any part of my body before.

 _Synthetic,_ I think to myself. My own eyes stare back at me through the mirror, exactly the silvery shade of the seams. _Unfeeling, inhuman. Thing._

I can feel my emotions swelling at the base of my throat, threatening to bubble up to my face, so I force my gaze away from the markings. Instead I begin to memorize the contours of my body.

I can't say for sure, but I think I'm stronger now than when I first was pulled from the gestation chamber. My limbs are no longer quite so lean and angular. My breasts are a bit softer in shape – modest, but full enough that I can make out their form even underneath my shirt. The muscles of my calves and thighs are more defined, curving subtly into the hems of my shorts, and my stomach is firmer beneath the fabric of my shirt. I'm still small and slim, but a wholesome diet and rigorous training have given my body a healthy sort of flush that wasn't there before. This, at least, is something I can take pride in. I am not human, but I am strong. And once again, I tell myself that it is enough.

Peeta has been watching my reflections, too, and our eyes meet in the central mirror. I expect him to drop his gaze to his tablet, as he usually does in moments like this, but he doesn't. He holds my gaze, curiosity in the set of his head. I inhale, somewhat unsteadily. There's something about how he's looking at me. Like he's trying to see beyond my eyes, or perhaps into them. Into me. The resulting sensation is strangely reminiscent of my first moments, when I felt so alone and vulnerable and bare on that metal table. But there's no terror here. No helplessness or desire to curl up into myself. Instead there's just a pulse of that strange, sweet ache in my chest, coupled with a curious urge to step down from the platform and press myself against him. Kiss his cheek again, or maybe even his lips. Allow my ever-curious fingers to reach under the barriers of his clothing and feel the warmth of him. And suddenly, from the deepest corner of my mind, there's an image – though, not even that. More like a series of impressions. Heat, quick breaths, the solid closeness of another body, a whisper of sensation low in my belly. They're vague and distant, and holding them in my thoughts is like trying to catch steam in your hands, but they carry the same urgency as base instincts. Eat, drink, sleep, nest, and… this. Whatever it is. And I _want_ – I want so badly my muscles have already tensed in preparation to move, reach and grasp, to do whatever it takes to satisfy the longing for skin on skin.

Skin. I wonder, suddenly, if trying on my combat suit will mean removing my clothing. My gaze drops and the moment dissolves like scattering shadows. How will I conceal my injuries? Perhaps I can feign modesty, and request a private area in which to change – but modesty is an emotional response, isn't it? It would raise too many eyebrows. Beetee's, specifically. I've never made an attempt to conceal my body before, and he would certainly want to investigate my motives if I started now. No, there's no way to hide. I'll have to lie – but what excuse can I use?

I'm just starting to invent and discard explanations when Cinna returns, several cases of varying shapes and sizes in his arms. He sets them at my feet with a smile. "Here we are," he says, and he lifts out the first layer.

My worrying was for nothing. The suit goes on over my clothes, after all. It's as lovely as the bow, and twice as sensible, and I love it even before I've donned all the pieces. First there's a tight, black jumpsuit of some sort of thin but spongy material that covers me neck-to-ankles. Then Cinna fastens a tactical under-jacket around my torso, tugging at the webbing of straps until it's comfortably snug. Next, shoulder guards. An asymmetrical breastplate. An archery glove. A helmet, tapered to suggest the head of a bird and flexible enough to be pushed back like a hood. Piece after piece, layer after layer. All sturdy but flexible, all lightweight, all bluish black – except, I notice, for twin folds of white inside each elbow.

Finally, the very last case is opened, and out come two slender, glossy wings, curved to lie against either side of my spine.

"Purely for decoration," Cinna says in answer to Beetee's questioning glance. "Can't have a mockingjay without wings, can we?" He snaps them to my back with a satisfied, "There."

They stand back to admire me.

I don't know how it's possible, but Cinna's suit has given me the same feeling that firing the incendiary arrows did. Powerful. Alert. Ready. Though lightweight, it's heavier than any clothing I've worn before, and I can feel the layers of material squeeze around my limbs and torso in a way that invigorates me. I'm safe behind my breastplate. Nothing can touch me, let alone hurt me. Not a blade, not a bullet, not Gloss or Seneca. Let them try.

"Move around a bit," Cinna suggests. "Tell me if anything is uncomfortable or restrictive."

I stretch, and jog in place, and draw an invisible bow. The armor moves with me. My regular clothing keeps me covered and warm, to a degree, but this – this is different. This feels like a part of me.

I can almost pretend that it's more than just a prototype, and that I'm about to be shipped off somewhere else. Somewhere where no one knows what my body is made of, and maybe I can make a real difference in this world instead of spending my days taking endless tests and using up valuable resources.

Maybe, if I prove myself battle-ready, I can convince them to let me go.

* * *

 I'm still thinking about the suit days after I first tried it on.

I'm in the one-way mirror room, tapping away at the table, listening to Beetee's instructions scrape through the speaker, and I can't keep my mind on what I'm doing. For the first time, I botch a cipher and have to start from scratch. Fifteen minutes later I make a basic miscalculation that sends an entire equation into chaos. My fingers card roughly through the roots of my hair, loosening my braid in an attempt to soothe a budding headache. I can do this. I know I can. I've done things much more difficult than this. I just can't focus.

"Okay, Katniss," Beetee sighs from the observation room as the table goes blank. "That's enough for now." He hesitates, the speaker clicking off for a moment. Then it squeals back to life and he goes on. "I'd like to try something different before we leave."

My knuckles press against the glass tabletop so hard I feel the joints shift against the smooth surface. I don't want another test. I want my bow, and I want my suit, and I want out.

"All right," I say evenly.

A chute in the wall opens and spits a curved piece of glass onto the table. It's roughly the size of my palm and darkly reflective, like an inactive tablet screen. I pick it up and turn it over in my hands.

"Slide your finger along the remote to change the image," he says, and then leaves me to puzzle out his instructions in silence. After a second or two of confusion, I place the pad of one finger on the cool surface and drag it down the curve of the glass.

The one-way window blinks with light. I look up in surprise. I was wrong. It's not just a one-way window, it's a screen. Right now it's only showing a faint grayish glow, but that is unmistakably what it is. I stare into the dull glow, wondering if Beetee and whoever else is in there – I still don't know if it's just him, or the entire Project Mockingjay team – can still see me.

I slide my finger over the remote again.

The window brightens, blobs of color sharpening into an outdoors scene. People in colorful civilian clothing laugh and talk while they walk between towering gray buildings. The speaker plays a soft background babble of cheerful voices and passing vehicles. My eyes flick to the top of the screen, searching for blue, but no sky is visible. Just the road, and the buildings, and the walking people. Gray walls on every side, just like always.

I wait for more instructions, and when none are forthcoming, I flick my finger over the remote again. The scene melts and reforms into a room with fogged glass walls and rows upon rows of trays bursting with green leaves and white blossoms. Poised statues peek out from between the roses, and every so often someone with an apron and earth-crusted hands walks past, carrying a plant or clipboard. It's a greenhouse,I think. Green isn't a color I get to see very often, and it's soothing, so I watch the botanists go about their work for a minute longer than necessary. I wonder, as one of them takes a bottle and starts spraying the leaves with glittering clouds of water, if what I'm seeing is happening right now, or if it was recorded weeks or months or even years ago and saved for reasons unknown.

I change the scene again with a swipe of my finger, look up and –

My whole body gives a little jolt, my breath shuddering to a halt in my throat.

Green. Trees. _Sky._

I am looking at a forest.

Birdsong and wind sighing through leaves – mist in the foliage – I'm closer to the window, though I don't remember moving my legs – and it's lush and cool and safe, and _free,_ and – and –

No. I can't do this.

I won't do this.

The screen goes blank as the remote clatters to the table. I barely remember to mutter an excuse to Beetee before I'm jimmying the lock and bolting through the door.

* * *

 Peeta finds me in his room, with my fingers clamped around the windowsill and my nose grazing the pane. My body is rocking imperceptibly back and forth, every muscle strung so tightly that they twitch uncontrollably, and I finally understand the phrase _vibrating out of your skin._

I can't rationalize my response to the forest. It was a gut instinct, a feeling nearly as strong as the one that draws me to Peeta. I want so many things it hurts, deep in my chest. This must be what it's like to have a piece of shrapnel lodged in your body. The restless need for motion, and the gnawing sting that motion brings. The compulsion to crack open your own ribcage, plunge your fingers into your chest and yank out the thing that's hurting you.

I can feel him at my back, close enough for his heat to reach me but not quite touching. His mouth clicks and he sighs like he's trying to think of what to say. Or how to say it.

I want my bow. I want my suit. I want the forest. I want Peeta.

At least one of those things is within my reach.

I shouldn't. It's stupid and reckless and probably crossing a whole mess of boundaries. But I _want_ so much that I can't stop myself. I turn, so suddenly that Peeta startles, and smack directly into him. My arms cinch tight around his middle, fingers twisting into his coat so hard that the fabric bites into the flesh. I allow myself, just this once, to indulge in the impulse I've had ever since my first day, and I press my face into his throat and breathe in his scent. I know what it is he smells like, now. Cinnamon, dill, honey, soap. I hold him tighter. And, to the utter relief of my mind and body, he pulls me against him in turn.

"Katniss," he gasps. I feel his head come to rest atop my own, a moist puff of breath warm against my scalp. "Oh, Katniss… What is it? What's wrong?"

 _I want out, Peeta,_ I whimper silently, not daring to so much as whisper it aloud. _I'm so tired. So tired of walls and tests and schedules. I want out and I want you to come with me._

I don't want to lie. Not to Peeta. Not again. So I don't speak at all. I just nudge and nuzzle until I'm as close to him as I can get, chests flush, legs as intertwined as they can be without toppling us both to the floor. He squirms for a moment, then gives in, shifting with another sigh to lower his head next to mine. Warmth radiates from the spot where his lips just touch my neck, slowly spreading through the rest of me. It feels so good, so impossibly good, that I know I will not be the first to let go.

But it's still not nearly enough. I need something I don't know how to put into words. I don't even know how I'm supposed to fulfill the need. I only know that I'm dizzy with the scent of him and there's a heavy tug low in my belly. A hollowness, hot and damp, that demands to be filled. It's a fidgety kind of ache, the kind that drives you to motion, like the one in my chest, but I don't know what motion would make it better.

"Peeta," I say, hoping against hope he'll read everything in that one word.

"Yeah?"

I shake my head. And then I make myself pull away. Peeta's arms hover in the air for a few moments after I step back, like he didn't want to let go, but then he drops his hands into his pockets and it's over.

"Um," he says. "Lunch is ready, if you want it. Ham on rye today. Family recipe."

I nod in agreement and we walk to the kitchens together to pick up my food. Neither of us acknowledges the embrace we shared.


	4. Galatea

It's my first real fight today. Nothing fancy, no weapons. Just bare hands.

I don't know my opponent. He's some sort of soldier, hand-picked by Coin to assess me. They pre-stocked my brain with fighting techniques, but no one has any idea how well I'll be able to carry them out.

That's what we're testing now.

The mat sinks and hisses under my bare feet. It's halfway between a foam and a gel, and it molds to the shape of my feet, sucking at my heels and toes. It's cold.

"Parameters?" I say to Beetee.

He looks at me over his glasses with his head tilted, seeming to deliberate. "Perform to the best of your ability," he says at last.

"But –" I cut off before frustration can seep into my voice, then start again. "But what is my objective?"

"Defeat your opponent. That's all I can tell you. Seeing as this is a preliminary assessment more than anything else, any more explicit instructions might adversely affect your performance." I must still look unsure, because he says, "Basically, we just need to see what you do, without us influencing your actions beforehand."

So, in other words, I'm on my own.

In a moment of uncertainty, my eyes find Peeta. He's on the sidelines, arms crossed, feet apart. He looks as uncomfortable as I feel. He should be here, next to Beetee, taking notes. Instead he was shuffled to the edge of the room by Jackson, a loud, crisp woman with a hard jaw and wispy brown hair stuffed up into a bun. His eyes meet mine and his expression snaps from one of brooding unease to false cheer. _You'll do great,_ he mouths with a smile, but it's too late; I already saw the nerves behind his eyes.

The hiss of the mat pulls my attention back to my opponent, who has stepped forward. He's unzipped his navy-blue uniform down the front, knotting the sleeves around his waist, and it leaves only a gray tank top to cover his chest. His nametag is hidden in the folds of fabric, but I remember glancing at it as we approached the mat. _Marvel Quaid,_ it read.

He's looking at me, and for a moment I hover between dropping my eyes and playing meek – the better to take him by surprise in the actual fight – and meeting his gaze head-on. I take the aggressive route, just to be safe, and lock eyes with him. My brain churns out descriptors automatically as we examine each other: _male, lean, strong, tall, pallid, confident stance –_

"Attention," Jackson barks. The soldier and I straighten and turn to watch her as she paces before the mat. "Today you will fight without weapons. Hand-to-hand combat only. You will remain within the borders of the mat. You will listen for my whistle." She touches a gleaming silver bar at the hollow of her throat. "One blast, you stop where you are. Three blasts, you disengage entirely and return to your start positions. Clear?"

"Clear," we echo back at her. Marvel's bark is a throaty tenor, bouncing off the distant concrete ceiling like the word itself wants to escape the gray walls. Either he's using volume to cover up nerves, or he's trying to intimidate me, or he's so confident in his abilities that he has no fear to begin with.

Jackson steps back and her arms fold at the elbows to overlap at the small of her back. Her chin lifts. "Begin."

I expect her to say more, so when my opponent darts at me, I'm caught off guard. But only for a moment. By the time his leg slices out to topple me, my body is already reacting. I dodge the strike, seize his upper arm before he can stop his own momentum and wrench his elbow back. He twists his arm away without so much as stumbling and swings an open palm at my cheek. Coin's colorless eyes flash through my mind and I flinch – but it was a feint; he shifts direction in a fraction of a second and my flinch carries me out of the way of a punch to the throat by a hair's breadth. I'm shaken, confused – of all the attacks and counters stored away in my mind, a slap isn't one of them – but my expression remains neutral as we separate, circle, asses.

I'm thinking too much. My head is a wasps' hive, droning with frenzied activity. I'm trying to think of every single attack and defense I know, and how I could apply them, and how _he_ might apply them. The air is too thin, too cold in my throat, the foam too sticky under the bare arches of my feet.

He comes at me again. I shrink, freeze up, and two throbbing bruises open up at my ribs and cheek in quick succession. I didn't even see his fist come down. Peeta says something from the sidelines, but I can't make it out over a rush of blood and adrenaline in my ears. I'm aware of my knee hooking around his thigh and my hands shoving, hard, until he tumbles to his side. He's up again in no more than a moment, but it's enough time for me to ground myself. My body knows what to do, just as it knew how to speak and breathe and walk. I just need to shut off my frantic thoughts. If only I could flip a switch in my mind so easily.

I deflect a strike to the gut and sidestep a tackle, all the while grinding my teeth at the hot, rhythmic throb of fresh bruises. I've never suffered the initial pain of an intentional injury before, just the duller, stiffer aftermath. There's always been local anesthetic to shield me from the moment of impact, and now I'm bare and vulnerable without it. I don't know how to react to this. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I pull back into a defensive stance, leery of coming under his fist again.

In a flicker of motion he's before me again, so close I can smell the sour musk of his sweat, and this time I'm not prepared. His shoulder smashes directly into my solar plexus, the ground sweeps out from underneath my feet and my body flips over his shoulder like a ragdoll. Everything inside me flips, too – my stomach, my lungs, my very heart – and then my spine slams onto the mat. The back of my head follows a millisecond later and I swear I can feel my brain rebound off the inner walls of my skull. My ears ring with three short whistle blasts.

I can't move. I try to jackknife to my feet but all my body manages is a clumsy twitch before subsiding into prickling stiffness once more. And I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I try to inhale but it's like my lungs have shriveled up inside my chest and won't expand. My mouth opens in an airless gasp, and I can't inhale, can't exhale, can't do anything, and some part of me knows exactly what's happening but I panic, and I'm lying on my back, staring up at the white-hot lights of the ceiling and thinking, _I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying, he killed me_ –

Air. Dry and cold but better than anything else I've ever felt. My breath and my movement return all at once and I roll to my feet with a gasp.

I don't mean to, but I look to Peeta first. He's several yards closer than I last saw him, and he cranes his neck to see between the heads of Dr. Abernathy and Cressida. They stand shoulder-to-shoulder, hands up as if holding him back. I look to Jackson next, meet her eyes and give a little nod in response to a quirk of eyebrows. She nods back. And then I face Marvel.

He's smiling.

I stop and stare at him. Why? Why is he smiling? Why is he _looking_ at me like that?

And then I know. And blood rises hot in my cheeks. He's smiling because he knows. He saw my fear, smelled it, and now he _knows._ He knows I feel. He knows the terror I felt while I lay on the ground heaving in an attempt to breathe. He saw me flinch when he went to hit me.

Something in me teeters and falls, and all at once the chill of fear is swept away by something thick and molten-hot. He – he – he _knew,_ and he did it anyway, he – no. Not anyway. _Because._ He did it to upset me. Purposefully. And I –

Why? Why would he do that? Why is he _smiling_?

Because he enjoys seeing me vulnerable. That's why. I can see it. He stood there and watched while I twitched on the ground like the shiny beetles Beetee keeps in little glass boxes to experiment on. He stood there, and watched, and smiled.

My chest rises and falls, rapidly, speeding to match the hard squeeze in my chest. I'm not scared anymore. I'm too full of this new thing to find any place for fear. I'm _angry_. I want to – to – I don't know. Hit things, rip things. I want him to hurt. I want him to feel all the pain and fear and helplessness that I did. And something darker, more instinctual inside me, whispers that I want him to bleed.

"Ready," Jackson calls, and we sink further into our centers of gravity. "Begin."

There's a heartbeat of silence, of stillness, as we take each other in. Me, small and blank-faced and panting, and him, standing alert and not bothering to hide a smirk.  His eyes are cold. Cold like Coin's, cold like Seneca's. And I hate it, I hate him, I _hate him_ –

He catches my fist easily, smirk opening up into a mocking grin.

"Oho," he says, "Tiger, ti–"

The crunch of my heel against his jaw garbles the word, and then he's too busy deflecting a swipe of nails at his eyes to finish it. I lash out, snap my teeth at his ear when he gets too close, push him into a corner of the mat. I don't care about correct stances or moves or counter-moves anymore. I don't even care about shielding myself from pain anymore. I have one goal, and every part of my body, organic and synthetic alike, strains towards it.

He pushes back, abruptly, and in trying to attack at the same time I end up twisting our arms together. His hand clamps down around my wrist, locking us together, and while I struggle to twist away he leans close – close enough that I cringe, even with all the hot, rich blood pounding through me – and mutters, "So you want to make this fun, huh? Okay. We'll have some fun."

"This is not a conversation," I inform him, and then bring my knee up in a swift arc into his groin. A cheap trick, maybe, but an effective one; his grip gives way, but not before he snarls a hand into my braid and uses his full weight to yank me down with him. My eyes water and I stumble to my feet, drawing back instinctually. He's taunting me again, saying something about me crying, and then the heel of my hand is driving into his nose with a crackle and a dribble of thick, dark liquid.

He's not smiling anymore.

Blood runs over his lips and down his throat in a shining path, and he smears it across his face and hand both when he swipes at it. The scent reaches me a moment later: bright and warm and metallic. My lips part to taste it on the air.

I feign uncertainty as he heaves himself to his feet with a wince, but he isn't standing for long. Before he can react I sprint across the mat in a muscle-wrenching surge and launch myself at him. The trajectory of my jump sends me crashing onto his shoulders – he stumbles, cursing –  my legs lock around his torso and I wrench my weight sideways to further unbalance him. Once again we topple together, but this time I have the upper hand. This time, I make sure his head takes the worst of the fall. _That’s for pulling my hair,_ I think, and roll to my feet.

I've fallen into something between muscle memory and instinct. The world has narrowed, constricting into a pinprick until all I know is slickness of sweat and the thump of blood in my ears and the hot burst of pain over my fist as I hit him, again, again, again. There's a savage kind of delight in the motions, in the ache of muscles, in the sight of my prey weakening before me. The same savage delight that touched me when I first knew my own strength. It courses through me now as I jump again, light and agile, and deliver a powerful kick to his chest with both feet. The force of my kick throws him to the edge of the mat and me onto the floor, where I land on my shoulders and jackknife to my feet again. He charges at me, slips past a defensive kick, hooks an arm around my middle and yanks me backwards. I twist my arms back, wrap them around his shoulders and use him as leverage to kick myself into a horizontal position. Then I bring my legs down, hard, and flip him onto the mat in front of me. I still have a firm grasp of one of his arms, so dislocating his shoulder is a simple matter of throwing my weight back as momentum takes him forward.

I feel the grating shift of bones under my hands as the joint pops out of place. A hollow gasp sucks past Marvel's lips and his eyes burn with fury as well as pain. Sometime after he lost his smile – I don't know when exactly – his scent changed. Now the smell of his sweat is stronger, and mixed with the coppery tang of blood, and tinged with something else. Something faint but pungent. That savage, animal part of me knows what it is before the rest of me does. He stinks of fear.

I'm not exactly sure how it happens, but all at once it's over. My prey – no, my _opponent_ – is sprawled before me, no longer fighting, no longer doing anything. I wait, in case it's a trap, but he doesn't appear to be planning on getting back up.

_I did it!_

I give a little hop, giddy with triumph, and spin to face the small group of spectators. I have to bury my grin, but I'm sure my proud posture and bright eyes say it all.

But there are no words of praise to greet me. No nods, no enthusiastic reviews of my performance. Not even a smile. Jackson's skin has gone sallow and her hand is fisted around the silver whistle. Dr. Abernathy's palm veils the lower half of his face. I look to Peeta for a clue, a sign, any hint of what I did wrong, but he's not looking at me. It's like he _can't_ look at me. His face is just as pale as Jackson's and his eyes are on the floor, but he keeps glancing at my downed opponent. My stomach twists. Did I do that badly?

I look back at Marvel. I frown. He still hasn't gotten up. Shouldn't he have, by now? I think I remember a snap, deep and thick and final, just before he went down. And his neck isn't right. It's warped, distorted into an angle it shouldn't be, and his head is facing the wrong way for how the rest of him is lying.

All right. So I broke him. Maybe I wasn't supposed to do that. But it can't be that bad, can it? Dr. Everdeen can fix it.

"I passed the test, didn't I?" I probe. They all avoid my eyes. "I did what you told me to. I defeated my opponent." The words seem too small, too weak in this huge space, like maybe they won't even reach the ears of the people standing just fifteen feet from me. I step off the mat, towards them, and both Cressida and Jackson flinch.

No one's answering me. Why isn't anyone answering me? What did I do wrong?

"Evidently," Beetee finally says, more to Peeta and the others than to me, "I should have been more careful to make a distinction between 'defeat' and 'kill' in my instructions."

Like all new concepts, this one takes me a few moments to process, and once I do I'm almost certain I'm going to vomit again. I didn't mean to do _that_. I didn't think… I didn't mean…  No.

I take a few more steps forward, away from Marvel, and Jackson slips past me to press the pads of her fingers into his throat, and then his wrist. Then she lifts her face and gives her head a slight shake.

I look back to the group. I'm only just beginning to grasp the meaning of what I did, and my eyes flit from one face to another for reassurance. I didn't mean to. They have to know that. Did I even pass the test? Did I even do that?

"Kid," Dr. Abernathy says at last. He flaps a hand when I turn to him, beckoning me towards the elevator.

I look at Peeta again, but he's gripping his tablet hard enough to crack it, staring down at it instead of meeting my gaze.

I go with Haymitch.

It's a relief, in some ways, to escape that huge, echoing room. The elevator is marginally warmer, and small enough that I can take in all four corners at a glance. And if Haymitch is regarding me with an expression I can't identify, well, at least the scrutiny of one is better than the horror of many.

I thumb the stop button before we reach level six.

"Dr. Abernathy –"

"Haymitch'll do."

"Haymitch," I concede, "Was my performance unsatisfactory?"

He finally gives up staring at me to pull a handkerchief from his pocket and pinch it over his nose. "On the contrary, Sweetheart. You're wicked-fast, strong as hell and smart enough to know just where to hit a man to kill 'im within seconds."

I consider this. The way Haymitch says it, it seems like what I did was a positive outcome. But the gray faces of my observers – and the icy, sinking feeling somewhere below my stomach – tell me otherwise.

"Evidentially that's why you all looked so very pleased with me," I intone.

"Well, what do you know, she does have a sense of humor." Haymitch chuckles roughly and stuffs the handkerchief back in his pocket.

"I don't understand."

He leans back to regard me through his bangs. "It's because you scared the shit outta them, kid. They saw what an efficient killing machine they had created and feared for their mortal souls. Kinda late in the game for that, if you ask me, but there you have it."

I choose to ignore the implications within that statement, though I inwardly squirm, instead focusing on the issue at hand. "So you're saying I performed… _too_ well."

"That's about the long and short of it."

I turn towards the elevator doors to absorb this, and then give a short nod. I hit the button again and our upward motion continues.

The doors open and I'm just about to head back to Beetee's lab to wait for him when Haymitch sets a hand on my shoulder. "Look. I honestly don't know what the hell goes on up there –" he gestures to my forehead – "but don't blame yourself for that."

I nod blankly, and though a grimace of guilt nearly breaks through the mask, my voice is empty and robotic when I say, "Beetee's instructions were unclear."

He gives a nod of agreement, then squeezes my shoulder. "Just let's – let's try not to kill anyone else, yeah? That one –" he jerks a thumb in the direction of the elevator – "that one's on us. The whole _no-murdering_ thing should have been a rule from the beginning. You didn't know."

I let my head twist away, avoiding his gaze as I swallow down bile. "I didn't know. I didn't think he'd break so easily."

Haymitch's hand finally lifts from my shoulder and he steps back into the elevator. "Yeah, well, us humans can be pretty fragile. Like I said, let's just try not to repeat this whole adventure."

I wait until after the doors close to look down at my hands. The creases are stained rusty red. I spit into my palms and rub them together, furiously, but all it does is spread the stain.

* * *

 My combat skills are never nearly as advanced as they were that first day. The exact reason remains a subject of debate among the members of the Project Mockingjay team.

I allow myself to be punched when I could have dodged; I miss a mark or two; I land a back flip sloppily. I intentionally slip up every once in a while in the hopes that the team will count that first fight as a fluke. And, after a while, they do. They blame Marvel, saying that he was distracted that morning and shouldn't have underestimated me, and they blame Beetee, for his vague instructions.

But I know. I know that I carry the blame for that man's death. And I'm reminded of it, every time one of Coin's soldiers steps onto the mat with a glint of fear already in their eyes. Beetee always makes sure to rope me in with a laundry list of restrictions and instructions, now, but that doesn't seem to ease anyone's nerves. They still keep their newfound distance; they still won't touch me unless absolutely necessary.

All except Peeta, and Primrose, and Gloss. Gloss has no qualms about getting within arm's reach as he swabs down a spot on my side, preparing it for a shot of local anesthetic and then a mild electric shock. He flicks off the plastic cap, revealing the wire-thin needle, and though it's a familiar sight I still have to fight not to squirm.

"Not this time."

He pauses with uplifted eyebrows. "What?"

I swallow. "If I'm to improve my combat skills I need to acclimate myself to pain. My previous performance suffered because I was unused to the sensation."

I neither need nor want to improve my combat skills, but Gloss accepts this explanation without comment. I wrap my fingers around the arms of the reclined chair, readying myself. Maybe this will be enough to make up for what I did. And if not, maybe it can at least distract me from it.

Never again, I decide, while Dr. Gloss sets aside the unused syringe. I'll never kill again. Never, because I may not know much about death, but I know what it is, and what I took from that young guard without even meaning to or realizing it. And because I never want Peeta to look at me like that again.

I slept on the metal table that night, not even protesting when Beetee hooked me up to an IV that kept me unconscious until morning. Because if Peeta couldn't even look at me, how could he possibly sleep while I was there beside him? Me, the… How did Haymitch say it? "Effective killing machine." Of course he wouldn't want me near him, let alone sleeping in his bed.

That goes on for three days, each worse than the last, until Peeta finally pulls me aside after a test.

"Why are you avoiding me?" he asks, cornering me in the lab before Beetee returns from the restroom.

I keep my head down and my hands visible – in order to appear as least threatening as possible – so I can't see his reaction when I reply, "You appeared upset after my first combat assessment. I wanted to avoid upsetting you further."

I swear I hear his breath hitch, just slightly, before his hand lifts to scrub at his face. I want so badly to look up, to meet his eyes, but – _No. Eye contact can be interpreted as a sign of aggression._ So I keep my eyes down, and my head bent, and my hands folded loosely at my stomach. _I won't hurt you,_ I say with my body. _Please. I didn't mean to. Please don't be afraid._

Effective killing machine.

_I'm sorry._

Not designed for emotional experience. Incapable of sympathy or mercy.

_I won't hurt you._

Machine. Object.

_I don't want to hurt you._

Thing.

I become, as the seconds pass, acutely aware of the two natures inside me, one cool and knowledgeable and methodical and the other near-feral and pulsing with distress. They go around and around, blending into one and then shattering into two again, one churning out calm accusations and the other sobbing _your mate hates you, your mate hates you, your mate_ fears _you and he_ should _, he should fear you because you're_ dangerous _, fear, fear hate fear don't show it don't show it or they'll know –_ And suddenly it's so loud in the silence of my own skull that I want to beat at my temples with the heels of my hands and fold myself into a lump on the floor and scream _shut up, shut up, shut –!_

"It wasn't your fault."

My eyes flash up in surprise, meeting his for the first time in days. My ears ring with the silence, and there's an itching kind of heat behind my eyes and in my nose. There's something pushing its way up my throat and into my face, and I don't know what it is but I can't risk Peeta seeing it, so I turn away to wipe down the spotless counter. Ripples of blue light bloom under the sanitation rag, spreading as the interactive countertop comes to life. My throat feels wrong – tight and gummy – and I don't want to risk speaking in case my voice gives away the malfunction.

I startle at the touch of a palm between my shoulder blades. My body and half of my mind strain towards it, all but demanding comfort, but the other half holds me back.

"Are you afraid of me?" I say. My voice comes out reedy and strange.

"What?"

I turn to face him and take a step closer, watching for the slightest flinch, the smallest dilation of his pupils. "Are you afraid of me?"

The tightness in my throat has turned to an ache, and it takes everything in me to stop myself from burrowing into his chest as I did that first day, but I won't. Not unless I know he wants me there.

"Katniss." His eyes crinkle with worry. He takes a step of his own, tilting his head down to look me in the eyes, and his hands hover just over my waist. "No. Of course not."

This time I can't stop myself. I press myself against him tight enough that I can feel his heartbeat through my palms. My face nestles into the curve of his neck – a safe little nook where I can hide my blood-pink cheeks and expel my uneven breaths. He's solid and warm and, oh, I _missed_ him in these past few days. I wonder, fleetingly, if he missed me too, but all at once another surge of instinct takes hold of me and I arch up onto my toes. I push my cheek along his jaw with closed eyes, draw back, gently butt my forehead against his chin, and start again on the other side. I'm only vaguely aware of what I'm doing, caught up in the warmth and the smell of him and the comfort of skin-on-skin as I am, but something in the back of my mind recites, _scent-marking: the act of depositing a pheromone, or "scent mark," often used by mammals to identify territory, offspring or mates._

Humans don't have scent glands the way other mammals do, and I know that, but it feels too right to stop. I shouldn't be nuzzling against him like this, or even allowing him to hold me – Beetee could return any second – but I've been so starved for affection in the past few days that I can't help but knot my hands at the small of his back and release a satisfied whimper. And plus, if his little hums of approval and the way his arms tighten around me in turn are anything to go by, he doesn't exactly mind.

"Katniss," he says again, and I pause long enough to lift my eyes to his. His face is bone-pale in the dim light of the lab, and the faint blue glow of the countertop turns his hair from sunny gold to cobalt on one side of his head. I reach up to slide a curl between two fingers, as if I could feel the color on my fingertips. His eyes close at my touch. His throat constricts in a swallow. "I…"

After all the glass and metal and plastic of level six, his hair is the softest thing I've touched in three days. I don't want to move my hand away. I want to keep it there and go back to rubbing my cheek against his. I want to touch our foreheads together. I want to touch mouths. _Kiss –_ that's the word. It's been weeks since I allowed myself to even consider it. Nearly my whole life. I remember standing in the middle of the weaponry floor, just after talking to Pollux for the first time, and turning to find myself face-to-face with Peeta. I wanted to kiss him then, too. It seems so long ago. That was back when the curious, warm ache in my ribs had just barely started – the ache that I've tried my best to ignore, despite how strong it's grown since.

Peeta lifts his own hand to fold his fingers around mine – briefly – and then lets go, abruptly, as if remembering himself. For a moment his expression clouds, but then he takes a step back and meets my frown of confusion with a smile.

"I want to show you something."

* * *

 I have to wait four hours, through weapons training and a dance lesson with Effie, before I can meet Peeta in our room. He still hasn't told me what it is that he wants to show me, and it's been all I can think about through the afternoon.

He greets me with a grin when I get through the door. In his hands are two dinner trays, and a blanket from the bed is draped over one shoulder like a very long, bulky scarf.

"So," I prod, "What are we doing?"

Instead of answering, he hands me one of the trays, then links our unoccupied hands – slowly, with his eyes locked on mine, as if asking permission. Though I don't know why he'd ask permission now. He's taken my hand before, usually to lead me through a crowd in the rare times we visit level four.

"Shall we?"

He leads me out into the hallway and to the elevator, where he covers my eyes so I can't see what button he pushes. We begin to ascend. My eyes lift to the softly glowing ceiling, as if I could see through it to our destination. I've never been above level twelve before. Actually, I'm not entirely sure how many floors there are in this building. The elevator has fourteen listed, but that doesn't necessarily mean there are fourteen floors only. There could be more above, or below – floors that can only be accessed by certain personnel. This is a government-run building, after all. I wouldn't put it past them.

"I couldn't find a basket," Peeta says with an apologetic shrug, pulling me out of my thoughts. "But I got a blanket, at least."

I have no idea how those two things could possibly be related, but he looks so eager that I can't help but feel an answering thrill of excitement.

The elevator is still moving. I watch the display above the doors tick from thirteen to fourteen to –

We stop. Part of me is disappointed. I almost wanted to keep rising forever. Endless floors to discover, to explore, and perhaps even beyond – perhaps the elevator would slip through the roof and rise in a bronze column into the sky.

Even before the doors are fully open I'm aware of the difference. The light is brighter, more piercing; the air gushes in through the widening crack in the doors, warm and flowing and saturated with a thousand smells. Warm concrete, green growth, flowers, metal. It smells like the open window. It smells like _outside_.

I'm moving forward before my eyes can adjust to the brightness, even before the doors are entirely open. I barely register Peeta's fingers slipping away from mine and the tray lifting from my other hand. It's bright, _so_ bright, but I'm aware of the flow of air all around me and the delicious warmth of sunlight and an openness, a vast emptiness unlike anything I've ever known. My eyes lift far before they've adjusted, and though the light stings and causes moisture to pool, I don't look away. I've never seen so _much_ of anything. So much blue, so much space… I keep straining to find the ceiling, the ending, but there just _isn't_ one. The only thing to break the impossible plane of emptiness is the occasional trailing mass of bright-white. _Clouds,_ my mind murmurs.

I'm outside. I'm out of the building. I'm out.

 The soles of my feet touch down on something that isn't concrete or carpet or tile. Something much softer. I drop my watering eyes and the world shifts hues from blue to green. Deep, rich green. I reach for the color with both hands, ending up on my knees, and comb my fingers through the… _grass,_ my mind identifies. It's spongy and deep and sun-warmed, and at least part of that wonderful green-growth smell is rising from it in waves. I rock forward with a small moan, breathing in as much of it as I can with my face inches from the ground and my fingers knotted in the long blades. When I rise, my vision has cleared enough for me to properly take in my surroundings.

It's a garden. Elegant and immaculately landscaped and at least twice as large as the entire weapons development room. It must take up the entire roof.

The roof. I'm on the roof. A jolt of both elation and disappointment runs through me. I'm outside, yes, but I am still confined to the building.

But my disappointment lasts only for a moment. Then I'm standing, head swinging this way and that, dizzy with the flood of new information to take in. I pace first one way, then another on indecisive feet, then –

Wait.

I look back at Peeta, pausing when I catch sight of the sadness in his eyes. There's a smile on his lips, though, and his head bobs in a _go ahead_ gesture, and with that there's nothing left holding me back. I turn and plunge into the garden.

The space near the center of the roof, where the elevator comes up, is mostly open lawns, but that's not what I'm interested in. I've already seen the grass, already felt it. I head farther out, where the ground is terraced into several half-levels and the space dissolves into a maze of painted planter boxes and gauzy screens and roses climbing trellises and low, artistically curved brick walls. Glass stairs spiral upwards, providing access to the lofted sitting areas. Flower pots of all sizes, both standing and hanging, spill over with frothy blossoms. Sheets of water, smooth as glass, shoot from slots in a rough-stone fountain. Behind the waterfall, a shallow pool ripples with golden-orange shadows. Fish. I want to stop and try to catch one in my hands, but there's too much else to see, so I settle for dragging a finger through the plane of crystalline water as I pass. I follow swirling pebble-paths through countless little alcoves of vine curtains and rose-tangled archways and fountains and, here and there, real little trees in pots twice as wide as I am tall.

And then, all at once, the maze ends and the space opens up into grass again. There are some yards of grass, some plastic-covered and labeled planters, hanging silver tubes that chime and tinkle in the breeze, a waist-high wall, and then nothing. I've reached the edge of the roof.

I approach the wall on halting legs. The sky is making me dizzy enough; I'm not quite sure what will happen when I look over the edge. Still, I have to see.

The tips of other buildings rise into view, first, and it nearly stops me short. Entire other buildings, as big as this one or even bigger. They may as well be whole other planets. This building has always been my entire world. All that there is. And now I'm gazing out at countless more. My gaze follows the shining windows down, down, down, and suddenly I'm looking at the streets hundreds of feet below. Tiny colorful beetles – _cars_ – swarm between the buildings in geometric patterns, and even tinier smudges move around and between them. I guess those must be people. More people than I've ever seen in one place, even on level four. More people than I ever knew existed. The motion and distance is so overwhelming that I have to step back from the wall.

My gaze traces back up the shining spires. They glisten and wink in the slanting light, one side of each heavily shadowed while the other glares bright gold. Of course – the sun must be setting. I knew it was evening, but in my excitement I had forgotten. I spin on a heel and immediately throw a hand up to block the light. Even then the sun glows through the flesh of my fingers, turning the edges molten orange and spilling out around my palm. I've never seen a flame, save for the tiny, blue thing that licks at the glass of the Bunsen burner in Beetee's lab, but I swear the sky is aflame.

 _The sun sets in the west,_ the calm part of me pipes up. It's oddly comforting, knowing which direction I'm facing. The elevator is west. The city, behind me, is east. To the south, in the far corner, is a curious patch of deeper-green grass, little flowers, two rectangular gray blocks and the largest tree I've seen yet – a willow. And, approaching from the northwest, is Peeta. He must have gone around the gardens to meet me here, at the edge.

"It's so…" I say when he's near enough. "Big."

"What?"

"Everything."

There it is again – that strange expression on his face. That sad smile. "Yeah," he mumbles, but he isn't looking out at the city. He's still looking at me. And all at once I feel like I'm standing before the mirrors in Cinna's workroom again. Like he's looking through my eyes and into my mind again.

"Want to find a place to sit down and eat?" he says, and the moment slips away in the breeze.

It takes us a while to settle anywhere, because to me every prospective location is worth thorough examination and consideration, but we finally end up near the southeast corner. Peeta spreads the blanket on the grass, just at the edge of the maze-like garden, and puts our dinner trays down in the middle of it. He throws his hands up in mock-exasperation when I tell him I'd rather sit on the grass than on the blanket, so in retaliation I sprawl over as much of the blanket as possible, leaving only a small corner for him. He squeezes himself onto the corner and pretends to pout. I throw a noodle at him. We end up side-by-side, him on the blanket and me with one leg stretched out in the grass, trays balanced on our knees.

The sun falls as we eat. Our shadows crawl over the edge of the blanket and towards the wall. I watch the sky turn from blue to violet to indigo. The air turns cool, but I refuse to go back inside when Peeta asks. He holds out his arms when he sees me shiver and I crawl into his lap. I don't want to leave. Maybe I can even spend the night here. I could curl up on one of those cushioned benches, or that hammock I didn't try because I got distracted by an insect, or even just here on the grass. After drinking in the unending sky for so long, I don't know if I could breathe again under a ceiling, let alone sleep.

"Just about everything up here is genetically enhanced in some way," Peeta is saying. "That's why the garden is here. It's all one big experiment. Or, really, a lot of little experiments. Those –" he points to the covered and marked planter boxes near the wall. "Those are some seedlings they're working on down on level eleven. Berries, I think. Poison ones. They plan on planting them in the wilderness between here and the rebel troops." He stops rather abruptly. I've never heard Peeta talk about the war before. Beetee mentioned it once or twice, and the weapons team brings it up sometimes, but their answers are always vague. I wait for him to go on, but instead of saying anything more about the war he just says, "You're hair's all tangled."

He's right. I took my braid down sometime before we ate, because I wanted to see what it would feel like to let the wind blow my hair around my shoulders, and now it hangs down my back in a tousled mass.

One of Peeta's hands goes to the crown of my skull, then slips down the length of my hair, all the way from head to tailbone. It's a comforting sensation, and one I'm familiar with. Often, before we go to sleep, he'll smooth down my hair as he just did before flopping down onto his pillow with a tired groan.

But this time he doesn't stop there. He repositions me slightly, so I'm sitting facing away from him, my crossed legs resting atop his, and slides both of his hands up my neck and into my hair. His fingertips push up, past my ears and towards the top of my head, and then pull down. His pinky catches, first, and he pauses to work through the tangle before it can tug on my scalp. The motion of his hands on my head – the slight, constant tugging at my hair – sends pleasant, ticklish shivers running down my neck and through the rest of my body. Once that knot has been unraveled, Peeta continues to drag his fingers through my hair until he encounters another one. One by one, he works through the knots. I've been watching the sky darken, but now my eyes slip closed. His attentions have fallen into a delicious pattern: fingertips drag along my scalp, down my neck, down my shoulders and back until a small tug halts them. Then one warm palm presses firmly into the sheet of my hair just above the tangle, so it won't pull at my scalp as he works it loose. Then, once he's done, his hand lifts and returns to my part, where the pattern begins again.

Once he's located and carefully worked through every tangle, his fingers begin combing down the length of my hair in long, slow, smooth strokes, one after the other. Just as one hand slides past the feathery tips of my hair, the other starts at my scalp again. It's a constant waterfall of sensation, and one that has me inexplicably and dangerously close to panting. Since the prep team came in on that first day, no one has combed my hair except myself, and certainly not with their bare hands. And really, this doesn't even compare. When Octavia brushed and braided my hair, it was rough, businesslike. This is nothing like that. Peeta takes his time, combing and smoothing and arranging my hair with obvious care. He doesn't even _need_ to be combing my hair anymore, really. The tangles are out. And yet he doesn't stop.

Not that I'm complaining. I don't want him to stop. It feels wonderful, and moreover, that feeling is back. The strange, needy, base-instinct, itching-to-move ache that I've only ever felt a small handful of times. Once again I'm haunted by indistinct yet powerful impressions. The immediate warmth of skin-to-skin contact. Deep, heaving breaths. The ache settles low in my belly, nearly between my legs, and turns thick and sweet. My temperature has risen; I'm no longer cold, though the chill of the breeze hasn't abated.

And still, Peeta's hands keep moving. He isn't just combing anymore. He tugs lightly at sections of hair, massages his fingertips across every inch of my scalp, traces the shell of one ear with a thumb, braids and unbraids and starts again. I'm shivering, by now, but it has nothing to do with the temperature. It's when he gently scratches his nails down the base of my skull and the back of my neck that my lips part involuntarily. His nails trace slow circles over the bare skin of my shoulders, then brush over my tank top until they reach the hem. And then his fingers have slipped under the fabric, just slightly, fingernails running over the skin of my lower back from hip to hip. My spine arches with a deep shudder and something at the apex of my thighs gives a warm, damp throb. My breath catches, and without knowing why I think, _yes,_ but then his fingers trace back up and he starts kneading the tension out of my neck.

He doesn't touch my anywhere below the shoulders again, but it's too late. Whatever happened when his touch strayed near my tailbone doesn't go away. In fact, it only grows stronger. The ache has manifested itself low in the cradle of my hips, and there it stays, pulsing with my heartbeat and sending out little tendrils that take up root in my chest until my breasts feel heavy and tender and strange, the tips taut as they would be when exposed to cold air. The flesh between my thighs is slick and hot.

It's a bit uncomfortable, but not bad, per se, so I decide not to be concerned about it. I'm not malfunctioning; this is supposed to happen. I know that. I don't know how I know, but somehow I do. I can tell. There's an urgency there. A want – no, a _need_ , not unlike the times when my body needs food or sleep or water. I can't identify what it's trying to tell me now, though.

And then suddenly, I do. My mind fits together the symptoms like puzzle pieces and calmly informs me, _You're aroused._

My eyes open in surprise, as if someone had spoken the words aloud. There's no denying it, now that I've put together the pieces. My body is shivering, squirming, all but crawling out of its own skin with the urge to mate, and Peeta's gentle, innocent touches are the cause. The idea is startling, at first. I never considered mating with Peeta – or did I? Maybe not consciously, but isn't that what my body has been all but straining towards nearly every time we're this close? In fact, didn't the Mockingjay team predict it when I sought out his bed? This ache, though separate from the one that has spilled from between my ribs since my second day alive, drives me to him just as the first does. But while the first ache craves conversation and affection and closeness, this one craves something much more primal.

But Peeta couldn't want me. I have to remember that. It's no use allowing myself to get worked up like this. I'm a synth. A thing, not a person. Peeta cares for me, but surely the idea of so much as kissing me would disgust him.

My emotions have taken a sharp turn, and I can feel them bubbling up my throat. They've become so unpredictable, lately. Unstable, like fizzing chemicals locked in a glass tube much too small to contain their reaction. I can't let them out as a sob or a moan, so instead I stare up at the first pinpricks of light against the deep-blue sky and begin to sing.

I've taken to singing quite often, recently, when Beetee isn't near. At first it was with Primrose. She's been teaching me songs line-by-line, singing them to me and having me repeat them back to her as she checks my pulse or blood sugar. My voice, after a few weeks of practice, has smoothed, and I can match nearly all of her notes. Now, as Peeta's hands go still against my neck, I find myself quietly singing one of her tunes. The song is, she tells me, about a young woman walking through the forest and coming upon the remains of what was once a home. Or, at least, that's how she imagines it. It's about fire, and a war, and a sunset. The lyrics are sad, though they promise safety and comfort, and I can't help but wonder if the speaker truly believes that the listener will be all right come morning, or simply beyond harm.

We're both silent for several moments after the song ends, and  then Peeta interrupts the distant drone of traffic by saying, "I've never heard you sing before."

No, I suppose he hasn't. I hadn't realized.

We sit in silence for a few moments more until a cricket draws my attention towards the nearest corner of the roof. I gesture to the two little gray-ish rectangles under the willow's draping canopy.

"What are those?"

"Oh." He begins picking at the grass. "That's where the others are buried."

"Others?" I say, while I think, _Buried?_

"FXFC-5 and LVNA-9."

I stare at the two little gray blocks until my vision tunnels. I knew they existed. I knew they died. But I didn't know they were buried, let alone here, just yards from where I sit. I always imagined the Project Mockingjay team taking samples of the half-formed bodies and then shoving the rest into plastic bags and down a garbage chute. Seeing the physical location of their remains shifts something inside of me. Before, they were concepts; names only. Now they're so much more real.

"Tell me about them."

Peeta expels a breath. "Well. FXFC-5 was first. The team had just started working on her when I was apprenticed. You know how that all works, right?"

"Not really."

"Oh. Well, basically, when you're around thirteen you start training as an apprentice. Usually kids are apprenticed to their parents –"

"Like Primrose," I guess.

"Right."

"Not you?"

"I have two older brothers. They were both apprenticed at the bakery where my parents worked, and there wasn't really room for one more, so… Well, here I am. My dad knew Beetee in school, so when my mom decided I needed to go somewhere else, he made a few phone calls. Really, I'm lucky. I could have been stuck with a sanitation job or something."

"Did you ever see them again?"

"My family? Yeah, a few times. They moved away from the city just before the war started, though, and after that inter-district civilian travel was restricted pretty badly."

I twist in his lap to look back at him. "Do you miss them?"

"Sometimes. Not as much now as when I first got here, though. You know, I actually joined the project just in time. Government facilities like this closed their doors to just about anyone around the same time that travel shut down – even apprentices, unless they were the kid of someone already in the facility. And then Project Mockingjay got off the ground just a few months after Beetee agreed to take me."

"So you've been working on the project since you got here?"

"Pretty much." He nods, gazing off at the rainbow shifting, winking of city lights as if seeing something entirely different. "Anyway. Got off on a little tangent, there, uh… Oh, right. So, Foxy. We called her Foxy. She was the first Mockingjay. She was more synthetic, percentage-wise. About seventy-five percent." He looks down at me and aims a playful poke at my side. "You're about fifty-fifty."

"I know."

"Right."

"What was she like?" He frowns slightly and I rephrase, "Did she look like me?"

"No. At least, she wouldn't have. She died before her systems could fuse, but her hair would have been kind of orangey-red, and her eyes would have been tilted up a bit. That's why she got her nickname."

He goes quiet. I don't want to push him – talking about it obviously upsets him, to some degree – but if I can claim any kind of family at all, it's the two failed experiments in that miniature graveyard. I have to know more about them. Who they would have been. Why they didn't get a chance to be.

"LVNA-9?" I prompt quietly.

Peeta's lips curve up. "Lavinia. She was mainly organic, with minimal synthetic reinforcements. We actually got to see what she looked like. Her hair was red, too, but dark red. Like cherries, or blood. She would have been a real beauty." He pulls up another fistful of grass and scatters it to the wind. "She almost made it. There were just a couple months left before she was scheduled to be initialized, and then, all at once… Gone. There was an unforeseen complication in the splices of her brain. It happened so fast we didn't even get –" His voice breaks and I roll onto my knees before him, reaching out to cover his mouth, but he speaks against my fingertips. "We didn't even get to try to save her. By the time we got there it was too late."

Staring at the distant headstones, I feel a trembling stab of pity for my fallen predecessors, dead before they ever opened their eyes. I wonder if they were aware at all. I wonder if I was. I try to push further back in my memory, before the coldness and brightness and noise, searching for any fragment of memory. The sensation of floating, maybe, or the whir and thump of the machines keeping my various body parts alive. But there's nothing. I am glad, I think. It would have been worse if they were aware. This way, the half-formed bodies in those graves were nothing but empty vessels.

And then a chilling thought creeps through me. "They… You said they both died before they were initialized."

"Right." He pushes down my hand and expels a long breath. "They were never awake."

"Did they die in the gestation chamber?"

He glances at me, puzzled. "Yes."

"The same gestation chamber?"

"Yes."

" _My_ gestation chamber?"

"Yes," he says for a third time.

I close my eyes, feeling sick, and the dark gleam of the chamber flashes behind my eyelids. It's no wonder I've always hated it. It leeched the life out of my sisters. Now it waits for me.

A hand lights on my shoulder, and when I open my eyes Peeta is already looking at me. His hand flexes. "I'm really glad you're here, Katniss."

"Me, too. Thank you for showing it to me."

"No, not – not the roof. I mean, I'm glad you got to see it, yeah, but I meant – I meant _alive._ When the others died, it was… bad. I was always so afraid we'd lose you too."

"You slept beside the chamber," I recall.

His head drops as he chuckles. "Beetee told you about that, huh? Yeah, I did. I wanted to be there, just in case." His palm slips down my arm and for the second time today he takes my hand. "I used to lie awake for hours. I barely got any sleep."

"Why?" For some reason, it comes out a whisper.

"I was listening. Watching your vital stats. Sometimes I'd dream that the alarms went off and I'd jerk awake only to find that you were fine. That's why I couldn't sleep in my room. My nightmares are usually about losing you. I'm okay once I realize you're here."

I frown, picking up on the use of present tense. "Do you still have nightmares?"

"Oh, yeah. If anything they're worse. Before, you were just - you know. A twitching body suspended in gallons of synthetic amniotic fluid. You weren't _you_ yet. And now…" He gathers up my other hand and holds them both between us. "Now you're a person, with likes and interests and dreams and emotions –"

I snap both of my hands away. "Inaccurate. I was not designed for emotional experience."

His expression shifts from one of uncertainty to something akin to wonder. "You do, don't you?"

No. No, he can't know.

I can feel my heartbeat in my entire body. For the first time in my life, Peeta's proximity is no longer a source of comfort, but a threat. The hands that only seconds ago cradled my own now reach for me again, but now I shrink from them as I would a blade.

"I was not designed for emotional experience."

He looks at me, head tilted slightly, as if considering me. "No, you weren't. But I think maybe you do anyway."

My lungs jerk inside my chest and my skin shivers with a cold sweat and every single thing I've pushed down since my first moments is frothing, roiling, hissing, trying to get _out_ , but I can't, I can't let it out, I can't show it, I can't –

"I was not designed for emotional experience."

"Katniss, it's okay. It's okay if you do."

_No. No, no, no._

"I was not –" My voice breaks hideously and the emotions surge through the crack, building just behind my mask until the pressure hurts too much to contain. "I wasn't –"

He's still looking at me with the same expression, as if I confirmed his statement instead of denying it, and the oxygen in my lungs is suddenly not enough to supply my brain. I go lightheaded.

_No, no, no no nonononono –_

Somehow I'm on my feet, moving, but my legs are wooden clubs and my vision warps and blurs until I'm as good as blind. The hard pound of my heels against the ground rattles the ringing from my ears, allowing me to hear the rasping wheeze that scrapes through my throat. "I'm malfunctioning, I'm malfunctioning, I'm –"

There's a sharp, tearing pain in my calf, and then my arms slam into the ground. My body twists into itself in a last desperate act of self-preservation, and I pitch back and forth in time with gasps of, "They'll kill me, they'll kill me, they're going to cut me open, they're going to kill me…"

Something touches me. I scream. It wraps around me, restricting my movements, and I fight back. I writhe, kick, wail. I want to live. _I want to live._ I will not let them take me now. But too soon fatigue burns through my muscles, amplified by the emotions that pour from me, and exhaustion weighs down my limbs all at once. I go limp with a moan of defeat. The bonds that hold me loosen, just enough that their pressure no longer causes much discomfort, and my torso begins to sway. Back and forth, back and forth, slow and smooth. They're rocking me.

Gradually, my vision clears. The all-encompassing, white-hot bolt of fear recedes. I become aware of the ugly, desperate noises that wrench themselves from my throat – _sobs,_ my mind explains, part of me cold and detached even now – and of a throbbing pain in my calf. I must have torn the skin open when I tripped. My foot and lower leg are sticky with cooling blood. I can smell it on the air.

I can also smell Peeta.

"I'm n-not sup-p-posed to _feel,_ Peeta," I gasp. Every syllable is a struggle, but I don't care. I just. Don't. Care. I've given up. I can't hide it anymore. I don't want to hide it anymore. Not from him. "Why do I f-feel? Why d-d-do I h-have to feel? It would be s-so easy if I didn't ha-ave to feel."

He rocks me.

I shudder and twitch and gasp until I've spent every drop of energy and moisture in my body.

I mop my face with some spare napkins Peeta had tucked away in his pocket for dinner and then forgotten about.

And then, just as my breaths are beginning to steady, it happens. It feels like something gives way, and something else slips into place, and for the first time all the different parts of me are working in tandem, bound by the strongest urge I've ever felt. My body strains towards its mate, and that definitely-organic part of my mind is sending out wave after wave of that warm, golden ache, and the detached part of my mind agrees that Peeta is an adequate and necessary provider of support and protection.

My mouth has bumped clumsily against his before I even realize I decided to move.

I lurch back immediately, horrified with what I allowed myself to do. "I'm sorry," I breathe.

But he catches the words in his own mouth before I can say anything else. He whispers my name, so close I can feel his breath on my tongue, and I slump against him. His fingers are in my hair again, and my arms have a death-grip on his shoulders. He uses his grip on my hair to tilt my head, and then his lips press to mine.

Oh. _Oh._ Our lips slip together, then open as our jaws slacken. We disconnect, take a deep breath or two, and come together again. Our limbs shift and twine until our torsos are flush as we explore this new thing together. It's slow, and sweet, and _wonderful._ And strange, too. Who was the first, I wonder, to discover that the joining of lips and tongues could bring such comfort?

And if we aren't quite sure how to line up our faces, and if our teeth scrape together for one jarring instant, and if both of us could face severe consequences for doing this, it doesn't matter, because _yes yes yes this is what I need._

I swallow the first moan out of habit, but the second I release against his lips. Because I can. I can sigh, and smile, and cry, and it's at once terrifying and deeply reassuring to be so vulnerable before him. Finally I can let everything show. Finally – _finally_ – I can relax. The relief is so palpable that fresh tears lace our kisses with salt.

* * *

 It takes an hour before I've calmed enough for my eyes to lose their puffiness and my face to lose its flush. In that time we return to the blanket to stare up at the stars and, admittedly, slow our progress quite a bit by adding the flush back into both of our faces and turning our lips slick and swollen. But then at last we have no more excuses. We have to go back inside, no matter how much I want to wrap us both in the blanket and fall asleep right here.

We're halfway to the elevator when a bone-deep rumble starts in the west. The rumble builds into a roar and at least two dozen winged shapes cut through the sky, nothing but blacker-than-black patches against the faint city stars. Hovercrafts on their way to the front lines. I've heard them pass before, but never so close. The war must be getting nearer.

We have to stop by level six to retrieve a forgotten tablet before returning to Peeta's room for the night. I yawn and lean into his shoulder as the elevator sinks past floor after floor.

The doors open and I go stiff.

"Ah, Peeta." Beetee adjusts his glasses. "I was just about to come looking for you. I have some good news, actually."

I slide slightly behind Peeta with the pretense of looking at something on the back wall of the elevator. If no one moves, maybe I can keep my scraped-up arms and leg hidden, not to mention the dirt and grass on my clothes and the state of my hair.

"Oh?" Peeta's voice gives away nothing, and I suddenly wonder if I'm not the only one adept at hiding what's in my mind.

"The team has been talking it over, and this evening we came to the conclusion that while KTNS-12 has been an encouraging trial run, the model is too unpredictable. Obviously there are some defects to patch up in the next design. Oh, don't look so worried. We're not anywhere near done with this one yet, just shifting focus."

"What do," Peeta says haltingly, sounding just as numb as I feel, "you mean?"

"I mean that Project Mockingjay has moved on to the development of its next trial, and you seem to be attached to this one, so I'm handing it over to your jurisdiction. As a reward, you understand, since you've done so well in these past years." He pulls Peeta's tablet from a pocket and offers it to him. "Here's all its information. We've already come to our conclusions, so do with it what you will."

Peeta accepts the tablet with uncoordinated fingers. "Why wasn't I informed?"

"I determined that your emotional attachment would skew the data, so we proceeded without your input." Beetee takes off his glasses to clean them on his coat, avoiding Peeta's gaze. "I'm sorry. You'll be back in the loop as soon as development of the next model begins. In the meantime, you'll be in charge of completing this trial. I expect daily reports. Stay within the set parameters. Otherwise, KTNS-12 is yours." He fits the glasses back over his eyes and observes us both keenly. "Congratulations."


End file.
